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HARBOURS OF 
MEMORY 



Books by William McFee 

ALIENS 

AN OCEAN TRAMP 

CAPTAIN MACEDOINE'S DAUGHTER 

CASUALS OF THE SEA 

HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

PORT SAID MISCELLANY 



HARBOURS OF 
MEMORY 

BY 
WILLIAM McFEE 




GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1921 



^^ 



> 






^^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, I92I, BY 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, I918, I919, 1920, I92I, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY HARPER & BROTHERS 

COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, I92I, BY GEO. H. DORAN COMPANY 

PRINTED AT GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A. 
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 

First Edition 



S)n!.A627652 
NOV -9 1921 



"HO I 



TO 
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY 

MY FIRST PILOT 
INTO THE PORTS OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 



DEDICATION 

My dear Chris: 

At last the moment is come when I can sit down 
and address you in the full consciousness of a perfect 
milieu. The ship is at rest in a tropical port, all 
the passengers are ashore enjoying their brief 
respite from steam-heated apartments, solidly 
packed subways, and an atrocious city government 
controlled by a corrupt oligarchy of professional 
politicians (by the way, why should an amateur poli- 
tician be considered an angel of Hght and a profes- 
sional a son of Belial?) We have not yet reached 
the critical period of the voyage, when the festive 
banana comes aboard and causes us much more 
anxiety than you or any other cheerful consumer of 
it ever imagines. I myself have dined, and the door 
of my cabin is locked, to convey the impression to 
the careless caller that I am ashore. I have, in honour 
of the occasion, assimilated an immense high-ball, 
not merely because I was thirsty and needed a drink, 
but as a part of the significant ritual of dedication. 
In the immortal words of the London mechanic who 
used to rise in the old *Tree-and-easy" forerunner 
of the modern music-hall, to propose the toast of 



viii DEDICATION 

some already half-inebriated guest, "I looks toward 
you, and I likewise cops your eye." 

For it is entirely right and proper that I should 
dedicate to you this collection of fugitive pieces 
written from time to time as editors and inspiration 
called, and to which I have given the fanciful name 
of ''Harbours of Memory" incorporating in one 
phrase two of the most beautiful words in the English 
tongue. It is entirely right and proper because 
to you I owe my real initiation into the ranks of 
what one witty American journaHst has called the 
I. W. W. — the Industrious Writers of the World. 
To you I owe the encouragement so necessary to 
the timid soul about to put out upon the wide seas 
of American literature. To you I owe a most gener- 
ous and (in my own private opinion) extremely 
biassed enthusiasm for my work. To you I owe 
my present amiable connections with American 
publishers. As Sir James Barrie once said of 
Frederick Greenwood, "He invented me," so I 
might point accusingly at you (let us say at Andre's 
in a full session of the Three-Hours-for-Lunch Club) 
and exclaim, "This man resuscitated me." For 
it is only the truth to say that when, in Port Said 
of blessed memory, I first received a letter from you, 
I was in a state of suspended animation. 

I say suspended animation because, as I am about 
to confess to you, my first connection with journahsm 
took place exactly twenty-three years ago, the year 



DEDICATION ix 

I left school. I often wonder what would have been 
my career had that first connection proved soHd 
and durable, and had I abandoned, after the manner 
of geniuses in novels, the profession into which I 
was being inducted. A fine theme for a novel! I 
would have worked for some years on the small-town 
paper, contributed occasionally by stealth (vide 
Dickens and Barrie) to the metropolitan press, 
attained a certain local notoriety by my radical 
political opinions, and possibly I should have been 
patronized by Sir Robertson Nichol or some other 
imposing literary mandarin, and become the per- 
petrator of a few volumes of piffling preciosity in 
the manner of Arthur Christopher Benson or the 
late Dixon Scott. 

You shudder; but such were my temperament and 
leanings at that time had they not been corrected 
by a healthy plunge into a world of callous operatives, 
energetic executives, and highly fascinating machin- 
ery. When I walk through Greenwich Village and 
become the amused victim of some member of the 
very advanced intelligentsia, fitted with tortoise- 
shell glasses, a muffled exhaust and a fixed contempt 
for everything American, I say to myself, ** There, 
but for the grace of God, go I." 

Had that first experiment in journaHsm succeeded; 
but it did not. It was this way. 

Young authors in America to-day, when they 
turn up their noses at the authors of our day in 



X DEDICATION 

England, must remember that we had none of their 
advantages. Authorship was not only a trade 
secret, it was one of the holy mysteries. Arnold 
Bennett had not then written his book on "How 
to Become an Author." The ready writers were 
the bosses of the whole literary show. They be- 
came editors and dictated the fashion of the hour. 
They set a genius like Barry Pain writing ridiculous 
serials and men like George Moore writing absurd 
articles which no unscrupulous publisher will ever 
want to reprint. Messrs. Pain and Moore are 
offered as examples of a disastrous policy because 
they have survived the tyrannical and short-sighted 
despots who ruled London and provincial journalism 
for so long and made the English magazine what it 
is to-day — a soggy and amorphous affair with neither 
individual character nor universal appeal. 

Put broadly, then, one can say that in those days 
of the 'nineties, there was practically no market for 
the young save the precarious foothold obtainable 
by what was called free-lance journalism. Articles 
written by experts for popular journals invariably 
suggested this as the first rung in the ladder. You 
saw a droll incident in the street and wrote a short 
article and sent it in. On your way to mail it you 
saw a man thrown out of a hansom cab, saw him 
removed to the hospital, obtained his name and ad- 
dress and rushed the news into the office at top speed. 
Coming back you took your tea at a bakery, and 



DEDICATION xi 

put the waitress through the third degree in order 
to write an article on "How the Poor Live." Or 
you might get an idea for a story out of her. In 
time you were able to make about as much per week 
as one of my coal-passers earns per day. What 
was happening to your soul was not considered. 
By a singular good fortune I avoided anything of 
this sort until my soul was a thoroughly seasoned 
article. Many years later, happening to be in 
London while Crippen, the notorious murderer, was 
being sought all over Europe, I sat down and wrote 
an article called "How to Get Out of the Country," 
rushed it to the office in Fleet Street, and on the 
following Thurdsay morning received two pounds 
in gold. Later, an unusual case of over-insurance 
of ships came into prominence, and I immediately 
filled the breach with an article called "How to Sink 
a Ship," for which I received another two pounds in 
gold. It was good sport and did nobody any harm; 
but as a training in literature I consider it about 
the worst possible. 

Indeed, I take the opportunity here of saying, 
because I know you will thump the bar with your 
tankard in hearty agreement, that the best training 
for literature until one is well over twenty-five 
is to have nothing to do with it. It is, in short, 
a misuse of words to speak of a training for literature 
in the sense that a brass-finisher, an automobile 
salesman, or a monumental mason is trained. We 



xii DEDICATION 

are fond of saying that writing is a trade, whereas 
we know that it is nothing of the sort, that the 
essence of it is not to be determined by the laws of 
supply and demand, and that one has to make fine 
and accurate adjustments with life in order to 
preserve one's soul alive and at the same time con- 
vince the purveyors of our personalities that the 
labourer is worthy of his hire. 

However, to return to my earl}^ struggles, as 
the biographies say, I one day suddenly desisted 
from trying to write historical essays like Thomas 
Babington Macaulay and wrote a short sketch 
describing, with an attempt at humour, our local 
commuting train service. I described our train 
setting out for the City one morning crowded with 
young and old, all cheerful and full of hope. Before 
the train reached its destination, the old had died 
and been buried beside the track, the young had 
grown gray, and the locomotive was standing amid 
moss and fern with birds building their nests in 
her smokestack. And so on. Broad satire. My 
own impression now is that I got the idea from some- 
where else; that it was not original. No matter. 
What is wanted in free-lance newspaper work is not 
originality, but something the editor has never heard 
of before — a very different thing. 

And as I had been brought up to regard all pub- 
lishing and so forth as a distant and awful mystery, I 
was too frankly scared of the great London journals 



DEDICATION xiii 

to send my small manuscript to them. It had, 
moreover, a purely local appeal. Now the local 
paper which came to the house was the product 
of changing times. The great railroad had been 
driven a few years before through the very strong- 
holds of feudalism. It tunnelled under forests 
where Norman barons and Tudor queens had fol- 
lowed the chase. It gave one glimpses of country 
seats still inviolate, and, a mile or two beyond, black 
blotches which were slums of almost incredible 
squalor. It roared under an ancient monastery, 
and the great trains for the North thundered past 
the very portals of the lordly House of Cecil. There 
was nothing unusual about this state of affairs, any 
more than in my being free to wander all over Hat- 
field Park and getting more good of it than the owner, 
who was the Prime Minister of England. The only 
conditions he made were that I should not torment 
his deer nor litter the bracken with paper bags. 
Nothing unusual in this. England was still the 
most democratic country in the world. But it 
had one curious effect on the local newspaper. 
It was called the "Barnet Press," but it had a 
number of sub-titles, such as Hedon Chronicle^ 
Hadleigh Recordy and South Mimms Gazette. It 
was a large old-fashioned mainsail of a paper with 
the inevitable **patent insides'' including a dreary 
serial that nobody read. It was the exact duphcate 
of hundreds of other papers all over England. It 



xiv DEDICATION 

had, however, this extraordinary distinction. It 
was not only called the Barnet Press, it was owned 
and edited by a man named Press — Mr. Truman 
Press. And one of the principal of the many ac- 
tivities of Mr. Press was the production of county 
histories and family records. For fifty guineas 
Mr. Press would go into your family affairs and 
draw up an authentic precis of your past glories, 
print it and bind it in blue leather with your crest 
in gold. There were many of our neighbours, of 
course, who would have paid more than fifty guineas 
to have had their past left unmolested, and others 
who were much more anxious to know the future. 
Mr. Press, however, had a fair patronage among 
the distant houses whose windows flashed ruddy 
gold in the setting sun as one walked through south 
Hertfordshire. He also catalogued hbraries and 
prosecuted researches into heraldic lore, supposing 
you had a coat of arms and were solicitous concern- 
ing the quarterings. 

Mr. Press, as you can very well imagine then, 
stood for gentility, for law and order, for high Tory 
and old port for ever. Unfortunately the southern 
end of our extended suburb was being gradually 
built up and congested, and becoming distinctly 
low in tone. With no quarterings of their own, 
they were prejudiced, in a beery and thoroughly 
English way, against those who had. On Saturday 
nights they danced outside taverns in the light of 



DEDICATION xv 

naphtha flares hung from whelk-stalls. Among these 
people the Barnet Press, organ of the conservative, 
propertied class, had no following. In as far as they 
were articulate at all, they were represented by a 
pea-green sheet called The Sentinel, a radical organ 
affectionately called The Rag, whose editor person- 
ally covered cricket and football matches, smoking 
concerts and Methodist tea-meetings, and who put 
his tongue out, metaphorically, at the Barnet Press 
and its aristocratic tone. Mr. Truman Press did 
not lie awake at night thinking out replies to the 
Sentinel's cheap and nasty sneers, but he did form- 
ulate a play to cope with the changing times and 
population. He saw that while the Sentinel might 
speak adequately enough for the artisan and the 
clerk in the small semi-detached houses being run 
up in scores in Wood Green and Muswell Hill, the 
tenants of the villas of Whetstone and East Barnet 
would want something different. The result of his 
cogitation was a sheet called The Mercury, consisting 
almost entirely of local news and reflecting a political 
tone slightly more conservative than its imposing 
parent, the Press. 

And one evening, greatly daring, I put my little 
article into a long envelope and addressed it to the 
Mercury. 

I have been very fortunate throughout my life. 
Some kind guardian spirit has ever been at hand to 
preserve me from premature prosperity. Here were 



xvi DEDICATION 

all the ingredients for that very thing. It seemed 
as if nothing could save me from being caught up 
on the crest of a wave of journaKsm and being whirled 
into Fleet Street and fame. The very next week I 
was paralyzed to find my article printed, and an edi- 
torial note requesting the author to call. I am 
obliged to confess that, had I such a situation to 
handle in a story, I should be in desperate straits to 
extricate the hero from a successful career in the 
newspaper world, terminating in the ownership of 
the Times. Nevertheless, the impossible happened. 
I failed. So did the Mercury. So did Mr. Truman 
Press, for all I know. But first let me tell you how 
I succeeded. I set out on my first visit to an editor. 
It was, as Mr. Conrad is so fond of saying, an 
altogether memorable affair. I put on my best 
suit, with a button-over collar too high for me, so 
that my neck was in torture, and a silk hat. I had 
to take the train half way into London, to a junction, 
and then take another train as far out again on a 
branch line. I can remember the keen spring air 
blowing along the elevated wooden platform of that 
junction and the foreman porter coming up with 
his shining lantern, which showed red, white, or 
green as he clicked the button, and calling out in a 
clear clarion voice while the train rumbled in: 
'* Stroud Green, Crouch End, Highgate, East 
Finchley, Finchley, Woodside Park, Totteridge, 
and High Barnet! High Barnet train!" I can 



I 



DEDICATION xvii 

remember it, and how the rush of wind along the 
platform made me hold on to my silk hat. A fine, 
bustling, cheery place, that junction, with trains 
to all sorts of Barnets, to Hatfield, to Hendon, and 
Enfield, where Lamb lived; with imposing corridor 
trains from Scotland sliding in to have tickets 
collected, and interminable sleeping-car trains pound- 
ing through on their way up the Northern Heights, 
the safety valves lifting and the throttle wide open 
as they got into their stride for their two-hundred- 
mile non-stop run to Doncaster. A fine place at 
all times, even on Sundays, with touring theatrical 
folk to make a cheery business of their journey, 
and sitting with a great show of lace petticoats 
and high kid boots on the tops of milk cans or piles 
of theatrical baskets. I can remember all this, I 
say, and even the jerk of the start up the long ramp 
to Stroud Green, as the foreman porter sang out 
musically, ** Right Behind! Right Forward!" and 
waved his lantern like an enormous emerald to the 
engine-driver, and I put my infernal silk hat on 
the rack and fell to thinking of what was in store for 
me. And yet curiously enough, I have no clear 
memory of the all-important interview. I mean, 
the thing as I recall it, is all climax, which no editor 
would tolerate. Let me think. . . . 

Mr. Press was about to attack the new public 
of our suburb from a fresh point. Crouch End 
was a villa locality, but enterprising builders had 



xviii DEDICATION 

begun what is called, for some reason, a parade. 
A parade is a street of stores with apartments over 
them, with wide sidewalks and electric trolley 
cars running down the centre of the way. Mr. 
Truman Press had an office in this very new parade, 
upstairs over a bakery restaurant. Or rather I 
imagine he lived there, and a green baize office 
table with a typewriter was the office. From his 
window he could see the crowds outside the Crouch 
End Opera house, a legitimate theatre, where 
Marion Terry was once more creating the part of 
Mrs. Erlynne in Wilde's comedy, "Lady Winder- 
mere's Fan." I stumbled up a dark staircase in 
the wake of a scornful creature with a dab of white 
cambric on her head as her haughty badge of service 
and was ushered into the presence of Mr. Truman 
Press. 

He was tall and had a beard neatly trimmed, and 
he addressed me, I can remember now, as if I were 
a public meeting. This did not prevent him being 
very much amused, privately, at his new contrib- 
utor, and I discovered, as I hunted for a place 
to put my hat, that there was a lady in the room. 
She was seated at a smaller table somewhat out of 
the light of the large oil lamp on the green baize 
table. She was dark, and I am ready to swear that 
she was extremely handsome. About thirty, I 
should say, so that now she is fifty-three, a very 
terrible thought indeed. She looked across at me 



DEDICATION xix 

in a most engaging and delightful way, while Mr. 
Press looked at the very new ceiling, where a few 
electric wires had come inadvertently through a hole 
and seemed to be contorted in a frantic attempt 
to turn back and hide. He looked up at this new 
ceiling and spoke eloquently of the pleasure my 
article had given him. The beautiful lady nodded 
her assent and my ridiculous mind, instead of being 
intent on the business in hand, as Mr. Arnold 
Bennett's would have been, was already busy 
weaving a romance in which this adorable creature 
was queen. Mr. Press informed the electric wires 
that he thought a little article on these lines would 
be the very thing each week. Treat local news in a 
humorous way. I undoubtedly — ah — had a certain 
gift in that direction, which might — ah — prove 
quite a valuable acquisition. 

It was about this time that I gathered that the 
beautiful lady was the actual editor of the paper 
to which I was to contribute. Or am I mistaking 
the story I afterward tried to write, in which the 
brilHant contributor offered his heart, hand, and 
pen to the lady-editor, for the facts. I am not sure. 
As I told you just now, I am hazy about the first 
part of that interview. Writing an autobiography 
must be an awful business. And in this particular 
instance I am obsessed with the magnitude of the 
climax. Brand-new electric cars rumbled outside 
the brand-new windows of the Parade. There was 



XX DEDICATION 

a. junction in the trolley wires just in front of the 
house, and from where I sat on the edge of my chair, 
still looking for a safe place for my hat, and listening 
to Mr. Press addressing the wires as though com- 
municating to a distant branch of my family what 
he thought of me, I would wait for the trolley to 
jump that junction and emit a fat blue responsive 
spark. Mr. Press would say that he was agreeably 
surprised to find literary talent in the neighbourhood, 
and the trolley would go **phutt!" in hearty agree- 
ment. Mr. Press was sorry he could not offer a 
very high honorarium, as the paper was not yet on a 
paying basis; and the trolley would echo *'phutt!" 
indeed not! The house trembled a little as the 
traffic increased. People were going home and other 
people were going out for the evening. The unanim- 
ity with which the trolley agreed with Mr. Press 
was beginning to numb my intelligence, but I re- 
tained sufficient presence of mind to inquire the 
amount of the honorarium. Mr. Press looked 
hard at the wires in the ceiling, rubbed the point 
of his beard as though to see if it had been singed, 
and replied that he would be happy to give me a 
check for. . . . 

At this moment the end of the world seemed to 
arrive, for the ceiling around the wires suddenly 
became convex, broke, split, and fell with a frightful 
crash, demohshing the lamp and leaving us in 
darkness. 



DEDICATION xxi 

A trolley rumbled past, said ^Thutt!" and disap- 
peared. 

In recent days, in England, the explosion of 
bombs in the streets, the fall of roofs, and the very 
actual wrecking of homes so that horse-hair sofas 
have been found in neighbouring yards and anti- 
macassars ruined beyond repair, have all become 
so common that only the final disaster of sudden 
death seemed to call for comment. In the 'nineties, 
however, we had not discovered how very heroic 
we could be. A cloud of dust from the plaster 
which presently began to settle on our clothes and 
deposit itself in our eyes, ears, and noses, seemed 
to be the only material damage we had suffered, 
for on candles being brought by the haughty domestic 
even my hat had escaped, and the typewriter, lying 
amid large slabs of ceihng, was unharmed. The 
lady, of course, was pale but very brave, and the 
haughty maid was immediately dispatched, at top 
speed, to the nearest tavern for sixpennyworth 
of brandy as an infallible restorative for shattered 
nerves. 

I need hardly say that it would have been the limit 
of tactlessness to attempt any further discussion 
of terms. Whatever honorarium Mr. Press had 
had in mind to offer, it was evidently displeasing 
to the gods. Perhaps it was on this account that? 
after contributing a half-column per week for four 
weeks, I received a check for the princely sum of one 



xxii? DEDICATION 

pound. I have at times had disquieting thoughts on 
this subject. Even now, after twenty-three years, 
I am far from decided whether I would have re- 
ceived more, or less, had not the heavens fallen. 
You can see by this story that my induction into 
literature was full of omens, good and evil. The 
point, however, is not that I waxed rich or even 
that I afterward failed to spin from my own entrails 
the required shimmering tissue of satin satire for a 
weekly half column in a neighbourhood which was 
really only a large dormitory for tired business men. 
The point, the radiant asterisk in my life, is that I 
began to cover a sheet of paper without being actually 
aware of the passing of time. For the first time 
I sat down night after night, to the detriment of my 
studies in engineering, and wrote page after page of 
entirely worthless fiction. Do not be alarmed, 
however. I am not on the brink of telHng you that 
this was the happiest time in my life. It was not. 
The artist in his teens who is happy is a charlatan. 
Life comes bursting in all around us too suddenly, 
too crudely, too cruelly, for happiness. The young 
artist who is worth his salt knows, and oh the agony 
of it! that his proHfic outpourings are only the clumsy 
imitation of a prentice hand. No, it was the un- 
happiest time of a fairly happy life, I think, for 
it is a bitter experience when one offers everything 
to a goddess and she turns her face away. 

It is rather a solemn thought, too, that her face 



I 



DEDICATION xxiii 

remained obscure for ten years. Ten industrious 
silent years, a sort of Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice- 
ship, during which I served my turn as artisan, 
draftsman, salesman, and seafarer. Looking back, 
one is constrained to marvel at the extreme confi- 
dence with which one watches the priceless and 
irreplaceable years go by. Life seems long and art 
short when one is young. Perhaps it is best so, 
for there is a touch of tragedy about the modern 
middle-aged artist with his fine gift for expression 
hampered by a faulty inadequate equipment. 

But I need not remind you that we now live in an 
age somewhat different from the Arcadian simplicity 
I have been describing, an age in which an inade- 
quate equipment is no bar to any of the professions, 
an age in which unscrupulous swindlers angle for the 
money of simpletons by proclaiming the ridiculous 
facility with which art, law, medicine, and literature 
can be mastered, an age in which every other young 
lady is taking a course of short-story writing or 
scenario-drafting, or advertising. This is our age, 
and we must five in it. We must accept it, and 
with it one of its most momentous and significant 
features — the modern editor. 

Has it occurred to you that the subject of edi- 
tors has never been courageously handled by au- 
thors.? I am aware the subject is full of difficulties 
because by the time a man has reached a posi- 
tion which justifies him to speak with authority 



xxiv DEDICATION 

he has established so many pleasant relations with 
certain editors (cunning men!) that he is content to 
let the others stew in their own juice. But this is 
only begging the question after all. To the artist 
all subjects are legitimate copy — and this includes 
editors. Shall a man refrain from writing critically 
of women because he loves his wife? However, 
realizing the reluctance of the novice and the wealthy 
alike to disturb the editors in their lairs, I step nobly 
into the breach. 

The fact is many editors have permitted their 
enthusiasm to run away with them. This became 
markedly manifest during the Great War. (I 
specify which war I mean because outside of my 
window in this tropical port, I hear the tramp ot 
armed men, the legions of Costaragua going up in 
their harness against the path of the neighbouring 
republic of Contigua.) Editors felt they must 
stimulate at all costs the pens of those in the field. 
They succeeded beyond the most sanguine expecta- 
tions. Articles, poems, and novels were written 
under fire. Lyrics were penned in mid-air, and odes 
in submarines. We suffered temporarily from an 
embarrassment of riches. Young ladies in naval 
transport offices planned fictions beyond the dreams 
of Bronte or Mrs. Gaskell, and I myself have come 
suddenly upon a naval captain waiting to see a 
literary agent and looking very sheepish about it. 
The thing became a joke and one foresaw a comic 



DEDICATION xxv 

rearrangement of the future, when the authors 
would outnumber readers and editors would commit 
suicide in droves. 

I say the thing became a joke; but alas! it was a 
joke taken all too seriously by many of the young 
authors thus ruthlessly dragged into premature 
publication. They could not see that the war 
was not going to last for ever. They could not see 
that when hostilities ceased and the inevitable re- 
action came, it would no longer be possible to inflict 
their amateur performances upon a sickened public. 
Particularly was this so with the poets. It is the 
one thing I cannot bring myself to forgive the 
editors, this bolstering up of false hopes of a public 
for poetry. It was cruel, it was almost wicked. 
These young bards should have been put quickly 
out of their misery. For the war was their sole 
inspiration. Now we are so sick of war that we 
are ready to fight anybody who proposes it (if the 
bull will pass) they are wondering what is the matter 
with them. Not only is their poetry no longer in 
demand — they are no longer able to sing. Let us 
take, as a concrete and illuminating example, our 
mutual friend, young SnifFkins, the Oxford man who 
was over here not so long ago. You will remember 
that in 19 14 he joined up straight from the univer- 
sity, got a commission, and was soon in the thick 
of things in France. And he began to write. Or 
rather he had found a subject. It was all so very 



I 



XX vi DEDICATION 

new to him. Life outside of his own little upper- 
class circle was a novelty to SnifFkins, I imagine. 
There was something really quaint in the splendid 
way the men took their hardships. They were 
English, of course. Had he gone to work instead 
of to Oxford, or better still, had he gone to sea, he 
would have found that men, whether English or 
Chinese, Latin or Slav, are extremely lovable, admir- 
able and staunch and the most interesting creatures 
on earth. But the very newness of it all was an 
asset, and he began to sing. He wrote fine little 
poems and they were printed. Later they were 
collected and had a notable sale in book form. The 
war went on and SnifFkins wrote more and more. 
I think he had four volumes of collected verse when 
his American pubHshers suggested a visit. The 
armistice provided an opportunity, SnifFkins got 
leave and came over on a lecture tour. He was 
"one of our coming writers." Pugson, the lecture 
agent, got him really very good terms, for we were 
in the middle of the Great Spending Era, the Silk- 
Shirt Age, and while our workmen were paying 
ridiculous prices for sumptuous underwear, our 
intellectuals were putting their minds into all sorts 
of expensive and fancy suitings. SnifFkins came, 
was photographed and interviewed, and I am rather 
afraid New York made him a little dizzy. We 
were exporting Russian Reds and importing Oxford 
Blues in those days, you will remember, and doing 



DEDICATION xxvii 

both with enthusiasm. A young EngHshman, whose 
travels had been Hmited to the Western Front, 
could not be expected to assay accurately the highly 
specialized atmosphere in which he found himself. 
It did not occur to him that he was not really a 
representative English author, that in London he 
was practically unknown or that apart from the 
war he had done nothing. It did not strike him 
as odd that neither Kipling nor Conrad nor Robert 
Bridges were prancing about the United States 
exhibiting themselves as representative British au- 
thors. He had no time. Between Pugson and his 
publishers he was too fully occupied to think. He 
dined in clubs in Gramercy Park and met a large 
number of people who specialize in welcoming 
visiting hons. He gained not the sHghtest insight 
into American life because he had no time. He 
lectured very well, I beheve, though of course his 
reading was far from extensive, owing to his early 
enHstment. There was a certain rise in the sales 
of his books and things looked very rosy. American 
women have an intoxicating way of making you 
think they are genuinely interested in literature 
and also in your own temperament. It is their 
shining gift, fatal to visiting poets. They are not 
interested in literature, of course, as you know — • 
only in making an effective pose. Fortunately 
for SnifFkins he did not stay long and when he 
boarded the steamer for Liverpool he was in a mood 



xxviii DEDICATION 

to bless America very heartily. There was no 
doubt about it — he would continue to write. 

But writing when you are an officer, drawing 
officer's pay and hving in the mess, and writing 
for a living as a civihan, turned out to be quite 
different affairs. I wonder, by the way, what has 
become of Sniffkins. I saw one or two poems in 
different magazines, an article on the Modern Trend 

Toward Free Verse in a review, and well, that's 

about all. I am incHned to think he took that job 
in his uncle's wine business after all. But I imagine 
he did some very thorough thinking in the interval, 
getting it definitely into his system that the war was 
over and that authorship, hke every other art, 
cannot be conquered in a week. And what would 
he write about anyhow, now his one subject stinks 
in men's nostrils? He knows nothing. He has 
read, comparatively, nothing. His tin-pot poems, 
compared with the mighty works of real poets 
hke Swinburne, Rosetti, Morris, and KipHng, are 
equivalent to the traditional hill of beans. His 
lecturetour must be a pecuhar memory for him 
nowadays. 

And you know, it was all the fault of those editors. 
Fame is heady stuff, and Sniffkins was made squiffy 
with it. Instead of getting his adversity first and his 
prosperity by gradual degrees, he had the process 
reversed. And with all due respect to the editors, 
an author is not a race-horse or a professional 



DEDICATION xxix 

pugilist. The great thing to do with an author is to 
let him alone. I feel sometimes like writing a new 
declaration of independence for authors. I feel 
like saying, in a loud voice, 'Xeave me alone. 
Keep away with that auto-suggestion business. I 
have all sorts of ideas in my head that you are not 
aware of, and with your permission I want to enjoy 
them myself before I work them out. I know 
perfectly well that I am indolent, but that is the 
inalienable right of all artists. Otherwise we might 
as well be artisans and punch the clock at eight a. m. 
every morning." And there is always this infallible 
argument, that even if a man only writes a thousand 
words a day, he will have written three hundred 
and sixty thousand words in a year, which is a hun- 
dred and fifty-thousand too many! 

And that reminds me that there are already too 
many words in this dedication, though a good argu- 
ment might be made out that dedications do not 
count, and that a man should have the privilege to 
ramble on as long as he likes. It is certainly a cap- 
tivating department of literature and one might easily 
form the habit of writing books merely as appendages 
to one's dedications. For how many books should 
a man write? I for one believe he should write 
one for each of his friends, one for his mother, one 
for his wife, and, if he be one of those extravagantly 
emotional beings who provide so much amusement 
for their friends nowadays, one for his mistress as 



I 



XXX DEDICATION 

well. I would even permit him one more so that 
he could dedicate it to his publishers, and it would 
be a worthy deed. 

Here, then, I offer you, in token of my undiminished 
esteem, these Harbours of Memory. Neither you 
nor I have been able to run our minds into the con- 
ventional, snappy, short-story mould of the modern 
arsenals of fictions. While you write too much and I 
too little for our own good, we are, both of us, the 
despair of those estimable and idealistic fellows, 
the editors of "red-blooded magazines for he-men,'* 
who are for ever galloping about, looking for stories 
with "action" and "plot," with "punch" and "pep," 
and a long list of other stimulating qualities. Not 
that we lose sleep over it. It is the artist's pre- 
rogative to be immune from the toilsome worries 
of industrious compilers. You cannot down him, 
for his joy is within himself. All men pay tribute 
to his whimsy, which can never be isolated by the 
synthetic process or reduced to fine gray powder 
by the most subtle electric analysis. Even editors 
are the delighted victims of his elfish fancies. So 
we lose no sleep. You add each day to the gaiety 
of the nations from your office in Vesey Street, while 
I slip down through the Narrows into open sea. 

William McFee. 
S. S. Santa Marta 
March, 1921. 



CONTENTS 



Page 



Harbours of Memory i 

The Crusaders 22 

The City of Enchantment 68 

A New Method of Reviewing Books .... 92 

On A Balcony 112 

The Shining Hour 132 

Knights and Turcopoliers 147 

Some Good but Insufficient Reasons for Silence 208 

The Idea 226 

Lost Adventures 238 

The Market 246 

Race 252 

The Artist Philosopher 278 

A Port Said Miscellany 293 



HARBOURS OF 
MEMORY 



I 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

As I follow my old friend and shipmate along the 
dockside and across the narrow gangway to the 
deck, someone pulls the lanyard on the bridge, 
and the whistle, clearing its throat with a gurgle 
of condensation and covering us in a fine spray, 
bursts into a hoarse bellow that reverberates against 
the tall, stark warehouses, with their wet roofs> 
dingy windows, and projecting cranes, and seems 
to vocalize, in a very epigrammatic manner, the 
clean, cold sharpness of the spring day, the brisk 
bustle of business, and the energy of the easterly 
wind that is drying up the puddles between the 
tracks on the quay and sending the exhaust steam 
from the winches in feathery swirls round the flapping 
red ensign on the poop. The carpenter is hammering 
home the wedges that batten down the hatch tar- 
pauHns, and the second officer, an old badge-cap 
on his head and dilapidated double-breasted uniform 
coat buttoned up to his chin, is superintending the 
lowering of the cargo-derricks. 

Laden with heavy portmanteaus and followed by a 
ragged, knock-kneed, shifty-eyed gentleman bearing 
a large canvas sea-bag on his shoulder, we pass 

1 



I 



2 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

along a narrow alleyway and enter a small cabin 
over the door of which is a shining brass plate marked 
Chief Engineer. We deposit our burdens, and 
the shifty-eyed one, who takes one or two swift 
and all-embracing glances about the room, with a 
view to some possible future enterprise, is paid off 
and escorted out on deck. My friend murmurs 
something about ''seeing the Old Man" and goes 
out, leaving me in the semi-darkness of the cabin. 
There is no electric light on this ship, for she is one 
of the old tramps which ploughed the ocean in the 
days before dynamos were cheap or wireless com- 
pulsory. A sturdy, two-decked, schooner-rigged, 
single-screw contraption, with wide hatches, accom- 
modation amidships, and no patents. A comforta- 
ble ship. I can feel the railway-rep upholstery of the 
settee, and the walls gleam white as the enamel 
reflects the light that eludes the green silk curtains 
of the ten-inch window. I get up and strike a 
match to Hght the shining brass lamp that swings 
on its gimbals by the bunkside. Many a mess- 
room boy has rubbed industriously at that lamp 
as he looked curiously at the books on the shelf 
just above it. Now the lamp is alight, I can see 
them, a double row of heterogeneous volumes from 
''Breakdowns at Sea," to Robert Browning's "Pippa 
Passes"; from naive sensuality to naked wisdom. I 
take down a book — neither sensual nor wise — and, 
sitting again on the settee, wedged between the 



*l 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY 3 

sea-bag and a portmanteau, I open the book and 
for a short while lose myself in its pages. 

And it is not very long before we are outside^ 
going down the Estuary in the sunlight, pass the low- 
lying shores with churches and mansions and fac- 
tories in the dim distance, past the ruddy-sailed 
wherries tacking up toward Gravesend, past the 
tall liners from Australia and China coming in on 
the tide, past dingy colliers from the North and long 
black meat-ships from the Argentine. Past all 
these, until the shores fall away and leave us alone 
on the gray-green tumbHng water and we begin to 
feel the motion of the ship, and we go in to arrange 
our dunnage in the drawers, and write up our logs 
and plan the work of the coming days. And among 
the dunnage there will be books, to while away the 
longs hours of the watch below, which isn't *' below" 
at all nowadays, only we keep to the phrase for 
the sake of the days of sail gone by. There is a 
pleasure unknown to the landsman in reading at sea, 
and you may know the experienced seafarer by 
the stock he purchases in the store where they sell 
chronometers, sextants, and nautical almanacs, 
besides books and pencils and writing-blocks and 
tag-labels for baggage. Such stores cater for all 
of us, from the skipper who likes fiction which is 
certainly not meat for babes, to the mess-room 
boy who follows Nick Carter through thick and 
thin, volume after volume of thrilling adventure. 



4 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

They cater for the grave-eyed, ruddy-faced appren- 
tice who desires greatly to improve himself; who feels 
inarticulately enough, that he is missing something 
his brother at college is getting, and buys serious 
books in a pathetic endeavour to fit himself for 
that splendid command with which his boyish 
fancy is occasionally preoccupied. 

Midway between the earnest student who uses 
books to rise in the world, and the blase patron 
of debilitating fiction, to whom reading is a narcotic, 
you find most of us who take books to sea. As 
the ship ploughs her way southward toward Gibral- 
tar — for we passed St. Catherine's Point some time 
ago — so I plough my way, horizontal in the bunk, 
the silk curtains drawn over the little scuttle, the 
bright, brass gimbal-lamp swaying to the gentle 
motion of the ship, through Gibbon's majestic 
volumes. The very uselessness of so huge a mass of 
magnificent information gives an added charm to a 
jaded seaman. One reads only to enjoy, as one 
imagines men of vast wealth and ancient lineage 
adding luster to their names by a dignified patronage 
of the arts. For we are, after all, wealthy in experi- 
ence and the tradition of our calling, and the litera- 
ture of politics and sociology and commerce makes no 
appeal to us. The somber realism of modern human 
documents leaves us cold. What we desire above 
all is colour and a grandiose conception of human 
life. We want barbaric splendour portrayed against 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY 5 

backgrounds and amid scenes of ravishing beauty. 
It is true we often do not know where to find all this. 
We go astray, led into trivial blind alleys of deleteri- 
ous sensualism by some lurid wrapper or pinch- 
beck reputation. But Gibbon is the real thing. 
Day after day, chapter by chapter, the narrative 
rolls on, the orderly rhythm of the day's toil and 
repose weaving harmoniously into the complex 
texture of the story, until the Ligurian mountains 
above the marble city of Genoa stand sharp against 
the dawn, and the tall Hghthouse guides us into our 
berth against the breakwater, to which a ladder is 
let down from the poop, and along which in due 
course we shall go ashore. 

For once in harbour, of course, Gibbon is put 
away. There is a time for everything, and it is 
emphatically not time for grandiose historians 
when one can go ashore. The mood changes. Ada, 
for instance, would not harmonize, with the "De- 
cline and Fall." No one can imagine Ada either 
declining or falling. She comes aboard with her 
little leatherette case of sample bottles of Ligurian 
wine on her arm, seats herself beside me on the settee, 
and regales us with a joyous version of the gossip 
of the port. Ada was a very pretty girl in her teens, 
which was not so long ago. Her deep-blue eyes, 
tawny hair, pink cheeks, and voluptuous modelling 
remind one of the coloured illustrations in a Christ- 
mas supplement. Her nose is delicious, and when 



6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

she throws her head back to laugh, showing two 
rows of big white teeth, it is infectious. She is a 
formidable example of virtue vociferously trium- 
phant. She invites us all to go up to her little 
place and have supper before coming on board. 
We accept with enthusiasm, and Ada> repacking her 
absurd sample bottles of wine, which looks like red 
ink and probably is, announces her intention of 
going up to say "chin-chin" to the Captain before 
stepping ashore. 

We meet her again later in the Galleria Mazzini, 
where is a bookstore and a shop where you can 
buy the pipes and tobacco Englishmen love. She 
suggests a drink in the Orpheum, and into the 
Orpheum we go — a long room lined with little tables, 
waiters hurrying about with miraculously balanced 
trays of drinks, and an orchestra of young girls 
perched high up half way along. The tables are 
crowded; but Ada, magnificently attired in blue 
velvet and nodding plumes, leads us to a corner, 
where a waiter produces additional chairs, apparently 
from his sleeves, and sweeps a score or so of empty 
glasses into oblivion. Ada, seated with her back 
to the wall, beams upon us and takes my book 
to examine it. She says it is good. She had read 
and likes it, which is probable enough, it being 
D'Annunzio's "Contessa di Amalfi." Ada comes 
from the country near Pescara. She tells me to 
get "The Sea-Doctor" as well. Over "The Knead- 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY f 

ing Trough," which seems to be untranslatable, she 
says she has cried. It was from Rimini, sun-dried 
rehc of the past, that she went to Bologna, and under 
the dusky arches of that old town met her dear 
Settimo, who travelled in wines. Settimo had am- 
bitions toward ship-chandlering and settled in 
Genoa, which suits Ada, who likes life. By life 
Ada means, I fancy, happiness, for she is a joyous 
soul. If she could only have a baby her cup would 
be full. So far that is denied her. The last time 
I was here there was much talk of Ada having a 
baby, but just before we sailed Ada herself, accom- 
panied by Settimo and her inevitable sample-case, 
came on board and told us it was all a mistake and 
they hoped for better luck next time. Of course 
Settimo does travel in wines, and makes a fair living 
without ship-chandlering, which requires more capi- 
tal than he can command yet. He is a dried-up 
little man with black eyes twinkhng on either side 
of his sharp nose, and he wears a small tuft between 
chin and Hp that imparts dignity and which he is 
always disturbing with his thumb and finger. He 
has a striking resemblance to the foreign count in a 
film drama. He says things, too, which I cannot 
catch, but which send Ada into shouts of laughter. 
After a drink or two we go up there, high up among 
mysterious streets which defy any charting in one's 
mind. We only know that if we keep on going 
down-hill we shall eventually reach the harbour. As 



8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

we leave the Orpheum, Ada waves her glove amiably 
to one or two of the hahituees and they wave back. 
She is sorry for them. I wish the phrase "easy 
virtue" had not been assigned so sinister a particular- 
ity of meaning, for it would otherwise describe Ada 
exactly. She is virtuous and it sits easily upon her. 
Without being at ease in Zion, she has a delightful 
charity and breadth of view. As we go out into the 
Piazza di Ferrari we pass a horrible old bag of bones 
who apparently has been flung in a corner of an 
archway with one cadaverous claw extended. Ada 
demands a lira from one of us, and, on receiving it, 
puts it in the cadaverous claw, which is thus gal- 
vanized into movement, for it withdraws into the 
bag of bones and protrudes again slowly, empty. 

If there are no babies, Ada's home is full of com- 
pensation. Most of them have four legs, and include 
two cats, black and white, four kittens highly camou- 
flaged, and a poodle of imposing presence and ad- 
vanced age. Other compensations have two legs 
and live in cages — the canaries by the window; the 
parrot, who immediately asks us if we want a cigar, 
want a cigar, want a cigar, by the sewing-machine 
behind the door. Others, again, have no legs at all, 
and swim round and round in a large bowl upon 
which the canaries drop seeds and pieces of cake. 
All save the last — and, whatever naturalists may 
say, goldfish are not demonstrative in their affec- 
tions — are made much of; and the parrot, on being 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY 9 

offered a cigarette, alludes to his grandmother and 
utters a piercing shriek. Ada's furniture is very 
Victorian and is particularly rich in antimacassars, 
wool mats, fretwork brackets with satin backs, 
plush frames, and tinsel balls on elastic strings. 
As the Second Engineer remarks, it is a home from 
home, for your seafaring man appreciates snugness. 
If there were any doubt about Ada's virtue, one 
look into her parlour would dispel it for ever. One 
look at Settimo, sitting by the table with the poodle 
at his knee and a long, thin cigar in his fingers, would 
make one wonder how it had ever been entertained. 
On the walls are Settimo's parents, life-size, in gilt 
frames. Opposite are the inevitable Garibaldi and 
Vittorio Emmanuele. On the mantel is the inevita- 
ble model of a ship in a bottle, the ebony elephants 
with celluloid tusks, and a money-box in the form 
of a wine-cask. Ada bustles out and helps a diminu- 
tive daughter of Italy in a black apron to bring in 
the supper, which consists of fried mullet, spaghetti 
served in oval dishes, a sort of pudding made of 
rice, dried fruit, hard-boiled eggs, minced veal and 
curry, artichokes served with olive oil, and one or 
two other things none of us shows any desire to 
investigate. Ada makes coffee, and the big flask 
of Asti on its plated swing-bracket is well patronized. 
We all take a gallon or two away with us when we 
leave Genoa. Settimo has a joke about his wine, 
which, he says, does not travel far. He means we 



lo HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

never give it a chance. A copy of the Carrier e delta 
Sera is spread on the rug and the cats forgather 
radially round the mullet bones. The poodle, 
somewhat too large for the crowded room, insinuates 
his weirdly tonsured person among our knees. 

Ada regales us with items of interest in her world. 
So-and-so is dead. So-and-so, junior, has married 
and gone to America. A friend of hers, a domestic 
in a big house in the Via Carlo Dolci, has just won 
a thousand lire in the lottery. She is going to 
Ventimiglia to visit her aunt. The Second wants 
to know if she is good-looking. ''Si,sil" responds 
Ada, and the parrot adds with deafening corrobora- 
tion, "Sz, si, Maria!" and gives the poodle a look 
of piercing inquiry. Yes, indeed, asserts Ada, 
flapping her napkin at the bird, as we might have 
seen had we been up the previous evening. The 
Second, much agitated, desires an introduction if the 
lady is yet unengaged. 

"Oh, go on with you!" says Ada, throwing her 
head back to laugh, and the parrot, with a perfect 
torrent of shrieks, hangs upside down on his perch 
until, finding no one taking the slightest notice of 
him, he readjusts himself and attends to his neglected 
toilet. What, go after a poor girl's money in that 
shameless manner! Ada is shocked at the cal- 
culating villainy of the Second. Besides, she has a 
sweetheart. The Second slumps back in his chair 
and assumes a look of despondency. He says 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY ir 

that ever thus from childhood's hour he'd seen his 
fairest hopes decay. Settimo, examining his long, 
thin cigar, as is his way when about to enunciate 
something in EngHsh, remarks that the Second has a 
tender heart. The Second sighs with his eyes 
turned toward the ceiling, and admits the soft 
impeachment. Always had, from a child. The 
first time he met Ada he was smitten on the spot. 
Took to drink when he found she was married. Tried 
to drown dull care in three litres of the best chianti. 
Care still coming to the surface, was finally disposed 
of in a pint of rum. 

So the talk goes on, and I fall to wondering how 
it is that, in the Hterature of the Latin nations, the 
Englishman is always cast for the part of a rather 
passionless stick, a dullard, an unobservant fool. 
I suppose it is because we have been chiefly repre- 
sented abroad by those embodiments of dignity 
and self-conscious smugness — the governing classes. 
Young milord, doing the grand tour, taking with 
him his servants and horses and carriages and a 
clerical governor, for ever reminded of his majestic 
destiny as a ruler of England, fresh from one of those 
intellectual cold-storages, the EngHsh pubHc schools, 
is largely responsible for this tragic misconception 
of our character. To read a novel of France or 
Italy with an Englishman in it, one would imagine 
us destitute not only of wit, but of humour and all 
human kindliness. In that Corriere delta Sera on 



12 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

the floor is a serial in which one of the characters is 
an Enghshman in Rome, a most lugubrious English- 
man. He is, of course, the conventional heavy 
Englishman, just as in England we have the con- 
ventional frog-eating French schoolmaster and the 
conventional Italian waiter and drawing-master. 
The Second, in common with most of the other 
young seamen I know, belies this character. With- 
out much culture, he takes the world of sentiment 
gaily. The Chief and Second officers, who are 
married, are very much the same. The Third 
Engineer, not long at sea, listens and joins in the 
laughter, which is continuous. This foreign at- 
mosphere is novel to him. Once he had rid himself 
of the funny English suspicion that every well- 
dressed foreign woman is lax in her morals, he will 
lose his shyness and carry on with the best of us. 
He comes of the happiest class in England — the 
lower-middle — the class with the most adaptability 
for either good or evil fortune, the keenest brains 
and most' dexterous hands, the only genuinely 
democratic class in England. If Ada were to live 
in England, you would find her in this category. 
And perhaps, if she does eventually have that baby, 
he may turn out to be the genius for whom Italy 
is waiting, who will do for Genoa what Dickens did 
for London, and reveal to us the teeming life, the 
tears and laughter, of that city by the sea. 

Not that Italy is without geniuses as yet. I know 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY 13 

one in particular, and, sure enough, he is down to 
the ship the next day. While I am in the engine- 
room, discussing a job of work with the Second, 
who is extremely dirty and cheerful in spite of his 
sentimental misfortunes, the Mate calls down from 
the top grating. 

"Are you there. Chief?" 

"Aye. What's the trouble.?" 

"One of these EyetaHans wants to see you. 
That young fellow who was aboard last time, you 
remember.?" 

"Oh, all right. Tell him to go into my room." 

When I go up, a short young gentleman with a 
sallow complexion and large, black eyes jumps up 
from the settee and bows. This is Mr. Ricardo 
Bertola, the genius aforesaid. 

"Good morning, Mr. Chief. I saw in the news- 
paper your ship was in and I have come to ask you 
a question." 

"Why certainly! What is it this time? Sit 
down." 

As usual with Mr. Bertola, it is a word in a book. 
He produces the book, which is an edition of Beowulf. 
Not satisfied with a good working knowledge of every 
language in Europe, including (as the copyrights 
say) the Scandinavian; not even happy in his famili- 
arity with Greek, Latin, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, 
and Sanscrit, Mr. Bertola craves a diploma in English 
literature. Gifted with an exquisite ear, he learns 



14 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

most of these tongues by conversation. Our carpen- 
ter cannot understand a Dago talking Norwegian 
without ever going to Norway. *'He spick better 
Norwegian dan me!" he admits, in wonderment. 
He does, no doubt, for he speaks better Enghsh 
than most of us. He has that amazing gift of 
tongues which leaves the rest of us dumb. But 
when it comes to Old English, Mr. Bertola is oc- 
casionally at a loss. He points out the word 
**thegns" and observes that it is not in the diction- 
ary. And it so happens that by a miracle of good 
fortune I am able to help him. I take down a 
pocket Shakespeare and show him a speech an- 
nouncing that "the thane of Cawdor lives, a prosper- 
ous gentleman." Mr. Bertola seizes it with avidity. 

"The same word.? How simple! And what is a 
thane.?" 

"Why, see what it says," I answer, pointing: 
***a prosperous gentleman.' A wealthy yeoman, a 
rich farmer." 

Oh yes. He is reHeved. And how am I getting 
on with my Italian.? Not very fast, I admit, not 
having Mr. Bertola's aptitude in that direction. 

"But Itahan is easy," he protests, smiling. 

"Possibly, but I am rather thick." 

"Thick".? Out comes note-book and pencil. 
Thick, applied to brams, is a novel word to him, 
and he makes a neat note. That is his way. At 
lunch, which he shares with us in the messroom, he 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY 15 

is confounded by substantives like mulligatawny, 
piccalilli, and chow-chow, as indeed he is by the 
substances; but they go into the note-book all the 
same. He begs me to come to his home in the even- 
ing and he will give me a lesson in Italian. Which 
is very charming of him; but I know those Italian 
lessons. The pages of Metastasio or Pascoh lie 
open before us, but we talk continally, in Enghsh, 
of English literature. There has been nothing like 
it since the days of Aristophanes, he asserts, and 
he ought to know. He picks up a translation of 
"The Day's Work," and reads me the story of "The 
Ship that Found Herself" and says no other nation 
could produce anything like it. He opens a transla- 
tion of "A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur" 
and calls it "something new in literature," a tour 
de force. He confirms my long-cherished suspicion 
that Fitzgerald's "Omar" is a much greater poem 
than the Persian original. He tells me that to study 
the Oriental languages he must obtain the gram- 
mars in English. He has written in English an essay 
on Persian literature for his diploma. And when he 
goes to Naples to study Chinese he proposes to 
write in English a thesis on Buddhism. As I sit 
in the little room, looking out across the roofs and 
domes toward the blue Mediterranean, I wonder 
what will be the future of this railroad conductor's 
son who talks with critical judgment of Dryden, 
Gray, and Shelley, who has read Hamhn Garland 



i6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

and the plays of Rostand. I wonder, too, what 
will be the future of this young Italy who is knocking 
at our old gates, the Italy of D'Annunzio, of Pascoli 
and Croce, the renascent Italy of Ferranti, Rubat- 
tino, and Marconi. A young doctor comes in as 
we sit by the window. He is going later to Tripoli, 
and is taking lessons in Arabic in the meantime. 
His father, I am informed, was a lifelong friend of 
Pascoli, a fellow-professor at the University of 
Bologna. He speaks in a gentle voice of the great 
man whose poetry he seems to know almost by 
heart. Quite forgetting the Arabic, he repeats 
that strange, haunting ballad ''0 Cavalla stornay^ 
and they tell me the story of its origin. They tell 
me, too, tales of court intrigue that sound incredible 
to Western ears, tales told in a whisper, in confidence, 
and which lie, they say, at the back of Pascoli's 
somber history. 

And so the days go by until the ship is discharged 
and we say farewell once more. Heading south, 
we drop our empty chianti flasks over the side and 
take up the orderly flow and return of watch-keeping 
and repose; Gibbon comes into his own again. Nick 
Carter is to the fore in the galley after supper. The 
Skipper brings down a few of his shilling novels with 
their striking paper covers — strong meat for strong 
men, indeed — and inquires if I can give him some- 
thing to read. I look over the shelves in some per- 
plexity. I know what he wants; or rather, I know 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY 17 

what he doesn't want. He is a tall, thin man with 
an expression of placid authority, the result of ten 
years' successful command. He regards seafaring 
as "a wasted life" and seeks forgetfulness of his 
mournful lot in tales of flaming passion and spectac- 
ular contests with fortune. It must not be sup- 
posed, however, that he is an uneducated man. 
He can express himself with forceful propriety 
upon most subjects, and his acquaintance with 
modern fiction, like Sam Weller's knowledge of 
London, is extensive and peculiar. The pit}^ of it is 
that he stops at fiction. To get him to read any- 
thing else is hke putting a balky horse at a fence. 
He is aflBicted with the modern Englishman's illu- 
sion that non-fiction is uninteresting. He is ironical 
at the expense of novelists, too, who, according to 
him, hand him the same old stuff in every book he 
buys. Here's the hero, here the heroine, he says, 
setting a can of tobacco and a bottle of ink on op- 
posite sides of my chest of drawers. Here in be- 
tween (taking a mass of cigar- and cigarette-boxes, 
hair-brushes, and a collar or two) are the complica- 
tions of the plot. The problem is to get these two 
together with the complications behind them. 

"Gosh!" he remarks, lighting a cigar, *'I could do 
it myself!" 

I suggest he try it. 

"Easy as falling off a log," he continues. Try 
it? Why, he did have a try — long voyage across 



1 8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

the Indian Ocean — nothing to do but take the 
sun — fine weather — got an idea. In reply to my 
inquiry about the idea, he smokes hard for a moment, 
laughs, and finally admits he didn't strike out any- 
thing very brilliant in ideas, but of course he didn't 
try very hard. 

** There was a man — and a girl ... in love, 
you know." 

"A can of tobacco and an ink-bottle — yes?" I 
murmur. 

The Skipper laughs. "Gosh! I don't believe 
there's anything else to write a story about," he 
declares, at length. 

I give him "The Nigger of the Narcissus," and he 
goes back to his bridge-cabin, to a new experience. 

We make good speed now, being in ballast, and 
it is only a matter of two or three days before we tie 
up alongside the jib-cranes and the iron-ore dumps 
of Goletta, which is by Tunis, with Carthage a mile 
or so to the northward. Here Gibbon might have a 
reasonable chance of holding a student, supposing 
we had any students in the ship's company. But 
for most of us the present is too fantastically un- 
familiar, the blaze of colour is too insistent, for us 
to bother much about ruins. In the evening, when 
the cranes have ceased to tumble the red ironstone 
into the holds, and the Arab night watchman, with 
his big yellow dog and heavily knobbed staff, spreads 
his little carpet on the quay to make his two-bow 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY 19 

prayer, we cross the entrance to the Lake of Tunis 
and climb aboard the electric trolley-car that runs 
into the city. We wander round, looking at the 
shops where wealthy French tourists are purchasing 
curios and Moorish furniture; we peer doubtfully 
through the enormous gates which lead into the 
Arab quarter and decide that we are safer in the 
wide boulevards; we even discover a bookstore and 
pause in the hope of finding a stray English volume 
to read. I call the Second's attention to a cheap 
line, of French classics, for he has sometimes incau- 
tiously owned to a knowledge of French. 

"Not to read it," he parries, looking alarmed — 
"not to read what you call well." 

So I purchase for half a franc a paper-bound 
edition of the "Barber of Seville" and a copy of 
La Vie Parisienney and we go on to dine at one 
of the little open-air cafes near the Military Club, 
where there is a band playing Waldteufel and 
Mascagni. Here we take a table, and the proprie- 
tress, a handsome young Frenchwoman, noting 
new arrivals, hastens to put us at our ease with a 
burst of unintelligible welcome. And what is it 
that we wish.? I hand the menu, in French and 
Arabic — the French handwriting being about as 
easy to decipher as the Arabic — to the Second, who 
gives me a long and menacing look before clearing 
his throat and attempting a selection. The pro- 
prietress looks keenly at our grinning faces, and then 



20 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

at the Second, who is extremely warm and worried. 
He puts his finger on a Hne of hieroglyphics and 
seems to signify that we will have some of that. 
The proprietress utters an exclamation. I look 
over and note that he is asking for plats du jour. 
Ah! she comprehends. But which? We do not 
spick French .f* Then she will essay. 

"See!" She points. "Feesh, rosbif, poulet, pond- 
ing, yes.? Which is it.? An' wine.? Fin hlanc 
ou rouge?'* Eventually, to the great relief of the 
Second, who is understood to remark, sotto voce 
that he doesn't know French, "to speak it very 
well," we consummate an intelhgible order, and 
Madame makes a descent upon another table. 

It is a very good dinner. When one considers 
that the total cost per head, including wine, coffee 
and cognac, is three and a half francs, it is an astound- 
ingly good dinner. The mihtary band plays with 
enthusiasm, which leads one to hope that they too, 
have either had a similar good dinner or are trumpet- 
ing their way toward it. Officers with clanking 
swords and pretty women; majestically bearded 
old sherifs in wonderful robes of silk with gold needle- 
work and turbans with precious stones; Arab women 
so closely veiled that the Third pauses open-mouthed 
with his fork raised, to stare; lemonade merchants 
with clinking brass cups; fezzed peanut-sellers; 
larky Arab newsboys; and an interminable proces- 
sion of incredibly maimed and misshapen beggars — 



HARBOURS OF MEMORY 21 

pass before us as we sit under the awning and eat 
our meal. We dally with the coffee and cognac 
and light cigarettes, and I notice the Second stealth- 
ily loosening a button of his vest. The Third, 
pushing his chair back a little, looks at me with an 
expression in his cheerful young eyes that I imagine 
to mean, "Say, Hfe's not so bad, after all." As I 
return his smile his face grows indistinct in the cigar- 
ette smoke, the brilHant colouring of the striped 
awning fades, and the clash and jingle of the music 
die away. Some one is shaking me, and I sit up 
with a start. 

"Come on," says my old friend and shipmate. 
"They will haul the gangway in in a minute. Just 
one before you go. Here's luck." 

We drink, and I hastily thrust back in its place 
the book I had taken down for a little while, a 
book which must have been, alas! only a Book of 
Dreams. 

And the gangway being about to be hauled in, I 
stepped aboard. 



THE CRUSADERS 



The information that we go out at dusk is received 
by the ship's company in various ways, according 
to the type and degree of responsibihty. Some 
deride it as a joke. Have we not been about to go 
out these last ten weeks? Some say solemnly, 
"Then we'll be sunk"; and add in a whisper, "and she 
'11 go down hke a stone." They adopt an attitude 
of mournful pride in serving aboard a coffin-ship, 
whose fate is sealed as soon as she pokes her aged 
nose outside the breakwater. Some mutter. "Thank 
goodness!" for they are weary of harbour hfe, and 
desire, though they would never admit it, to see the 
land sink down behind the horizon. Some are senti- 
mentally regretful, for they are in love with dark- 
eyed Italian signorine, languorous Syriennes, ami- 
able Maltese, or brisk and stylish Greek koritsai, 
with whom they have danced in the gaunt Casino 
or bathed on the yellow beach below. Some are 
excited, for they are young and this is almost the 
first time they have been to sea. And others are 
serious, for they have responsibilities. It is a singu- 
lar fact that one cannot be forehanded with an 



THE CRUSADERS 23 

anxiety. One may prepare unto the very last and 
most ultimate contingency. One may foresee all 
disaster, and provide barrier behind barrier of 
remedial devices. One may have been through a 
precisely identical experience for years on end — 
N'importe! Fear, born of the stern matron Re- 
sponsibility, sits on one's shoulders like some heavy 
imp of darkness, and one is preoccupied and, pos- 
sibly, cantankerous. 

While I am making out the engine-room station- 
bill, the Chief enters and hands me a chit. It is a 
formal order to do something which is already done. 
It adds at the bottom that at 6:30 sharp we shall 
move out. I finish making out the bill, apportioning 
the weaker brethren of the stokehold to different 
watches, and assigning Mr. Ferguson, a junior 
engineer, to take watch with me. More of Mr. 
Ferguson anon. 

I go out and take a survey of progress on deck. 
In the classic phrase, all is bustle and confusion. 
Men in khaki are moving rapidly to and fro, hauling 
heavy cases which contain shells, bombs, detonators, 
compressed-air bottles, spare parts, and stores of 
all kinds. Others, mounted on flimsy ladders, are 
busy connecting controls, filling petrol tanks, and 
adjusting engines, on the seaplanes which He, Hke 
huge yellow grasshoppers with folded wings, under 
the awnings of the fore-deck hangar. Walking 
about in an extreme undress of gray flannel trousers 



1 



24 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

and petrol-splashed khaki tunics are some of the 
pilots and observers. 

Suddenly there is a roar from one of the engines; 
the awnings belly and flap violently; a piece of 
newspaper rushes past me like a bullet, and I find 
myself in an almost irresistible gale of wind. A 
mechanic is trying out an engine. One of our cats, 
seated on the mine-sweeping machine, jumps off" 
in disgust at the noise, and is immediately blown out 
of sight, tail in air, along the deck. We hold on. 
The engine dies down, surges up, dies away again, 
flutters, barks once with astonishing vigour, and 
stops. A pilot, who has been making frantic gestures 
to the mechanic, whose head alone is visible above 
the fuselage, now cHmbs the piano-wire ladder which 
leads to the seat, and converses with energy, and, 
let us hope, widsom. The flight-commander, an 
imposing creature in naval uniform, with the gold- 
lace rings of a lieutenant, a pair of gold wings, 
and a gold star on his sleeve, hurries up and speaks 
rapidly to his pilots. 

They all light cigarettes. This, I observe, is 
the one indispensable factor of war — one must 
light a cigarette. At any given moment of the day, 
I will guarantee that three fourths of our ship's 
company are each striking one of the dubious 
matches supplied by our glorious Oriental ally, 
and are lighting cigarettes supplied by our glorious 
Hellenic ally. I tremble when I think of the noise 



THE CRUSADERS 25 

which is going on beneath the artillery fire of the 
Western and Eastern fronts — the noise of millions 
of matches being struck to ignite millions of cigar- 
ettes. I observe a youth descending from a ladder, 
where he has been putting tiny brass screws into a 
defective aileron, to the gangway between the plane- 
platform and the bulwarks. He sits down, produces 
a cigarette. I see the commander, who was master 
of a saihng ship before the flight-commander's 
parents were married, lighting a cigarette from 
the chief engineer's. I observe a signalman's face 
protruding from the telephone-exchange window, 
and I also observe a cigarette protruding from his 
ear. In the flap pocket of the quartermaster, now 
testing the steering gear, is an obvious box of cigar- 
ettes. I feel that I have eluded my destiny some- 
how. It has become perfectly plain to me that no 
man can achieve greatness in war unless he smokes 
cigarettes. But I digress. It is time to take a 
turn out of the engines. 

Passing along the bridge deck, where a small army 
of young sailors are hoisting the motor-launches 
and looking extremely serious about it, I come upon 
a still more serious party clustered about an anti- 
aircraft gun. Some hold shells under their arms 
very much as a lady holds her Pomeranian, and 
tickle the fuse (which corresponds to the nose of 
the Pomeranian) with a wrench. Some are pushing 
with tremendous energy a sort of mop which is 



26 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

always getting jammed half way up the bore. Others 
stand in readiness, breathing hard and looking 
round self-consciously. They are the anti-aircraft 
crew. I pass by, smiling internally. They are 
about to be blooded, all except the muscular per- 
son with the hoarse voice who lectures them on the 
mysteries of their craft. I know him well. I have 
a peculiar detestation of this particular gun, which 
will be comprehended when it is pointed out that 
the holding-down bolts are precisely three feet six 
inches above my pillow. Just as I doze, after a 
hard day below and a plentiful lunch, followed 
by a perfect cigar, the muscular person with the 
hoarse voice begins an oration upon the use in 
action of the ten-pounder ** 'Otchkiss quick-firin' 
gun, anti-aircraft mountings.'' His voice becomes 
a husky growl as he indicates the various portions 
of the gun's anatomy to the open-mouthed young- 
sters. I lie below, devising a fitting eternal punish- 
ment for him and his hobnailed minions. An 
ammunition box is opened — slap! A shell is hfted 
and put in — slap two. Click! The breech closes. 
Clock! It opens. Then comes a thump, as some- 
one drops one of the spanners. A scuffle of boots. 
Hoarse voice descanting upon **use o' judgment in 
estimatin' speed of objective only obtainable in 
actual practice on enemy machines." Hence I am 
no friend of this gun and her crew. 

I pass on and down the ladder to the spar deck. 



THE CRUSADERS 27 

Here is where I live. Here is the engine room, 
the steering gear, the heart of the ship. Abaft of 
this again are more planes under high awnings. 
Below them is the main deck, what is called the 
lower or mess deck, where hammocks are slung 
at night and meals are eaten during the day. Far- 
ther aft is the sick bay, and below that the stokers' 
quarters. Below these are cold stores and ammuni- 
tion rooms and cells for the unworthy, of whom, alas, 
even this respectable ship carries a few. 

As I step into the alleyway where I Hve, and pass 
into the engine room, the steering engine, "which is 
situated in its own little steel cottage close at hand, 
suddenly performs a furious staccato version of a 
Strauss chorus, and then stops abruptly, as if 
ashamed of its outburst, breathing steamily through 
its nostrils. The control-shaft remains motionless. 
Evidently the quartermaster has satisfied himself 
that all is well. A perspiring oiler emerges from 
the engine-room ladder and fusses with the glands 
and lubricators. I look down at the shining covers 
of the main-engine cylinders, and suddenly I ex- 
perience an emotional change. In some mysterious 
fashion the load of responsibility lifts, and I become 
light-hearted. I feel gay and care-free. After 
all, I reflect brazenly, what's the odds? One has 
done one's utmost — let what may happen. Care 
killed a cat. There can be no surprises. These 
huge, simmering, silent engines are my friends. 



28 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

With them and their Hke I have spent many arduous 
years. I have their record. I know their secrets. 
I have had them asunder. Their enormous propor- 
tions are our heritage from a bygone generation 
and I have stood in amazement before the heroic 
dimensions of their midmost ventricles. I reflect 
upon their countless voyages when I was a child; 
upon the men who have slaved in the heat of the 
East, who have slept in my bunk, who have come 
aboard full to the teeth, who have sung their songs 
and drawn their pay, and now He, let us hope, in 
some quiet churchyard at home. 

I reflect upon all this, I say, and I am no longer 
worried. For a brief spell I savour the pleasure of 
the seafaring life. It occurs to me that this explains 
in part the enigmatic affability which the great 
occasionally display. They have a sudden vision 
of life as a whole, and for one brief instant they 
become human, and smile. It may be so. How- 
ever, I must descend from the heights of speculation 
into the engine room. As I reach the middle grat- 
ing, I feel the undersides of the cylinders, and note 
that they are suflBciently hot. The thermometer 
hanging near the generator registers a hundred 
and ten. Four great ventilators send down cool 
jets of air, and I decide that the temperature is 
very comfortable. A glance at the oil-gauge and 
speed-meter and I descend yet farther to the starting 
platform. 



THE CRUSADERS 29 

A young man is walking to and fro in a highly 
superior manner, as if personally responsible for 
the conduct of the war, and quite equal to the oc- 
casion. He is an engine-room artificer, and assists 
Mr. Ferguson and myself while on watch. I inquire 
if everything is ready for me, and he assures me, 
with a whimsical smile, that he believes so. Rather 
nettled at this frivolous behaviour I become anxious 
again and put one or two pertinent queries. I try 
the reversing gear, which moves over with a smart 
click and a most gratifying hiss, and open the man- 
oeuvring-valve. The young man, whom I have 
lectured assiduously on this point, stands ready, 
and as the enormous cranks move and I shout, he 
reverses the gear. The cranks, with a sigh of immense 
boredom, move back and pause. Again we reverse 
and I administer a shade more steam. The cranks 
move again and the business is repeated — in the 
opinion of the young man — ad nauseam. At last, 
after many essays, the high-pressure crank is per- 
mitted to descend to the bottom of the stroke, which 
is six feet; it reaches the dead centre, the point de 
mort, as our alHes call it, passes it, and comes up 
like a giant refreshed. We reverse, and it goes down 
again, and up, over the top, and continues to revolve 
in a solemn manner. Bon! 

I make a brief excursion round to the back, where 
a number of auxiliary engines are busily engaged 
about their own particular businesses. I note that 



30 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

the main feed-pumps, the auxihary feed-pump, 
the circulating pumps, the bilge-pump, the sanitary- 
pump, the fresh-water pump, are all working well, 
glance at one or two gauges, and hasten back to 
the manceuvring-valve. We reverse and go ahead 
for a few revolutions. We stop. The young man, 
who is not so foolish as he looks, presses a button 
and speaks into a tube marked "Chief Engineer." 
What he says I cannot hear, but I know perfectly 
well that the Chief in his cabin is grinning. 

The young man is somewhat of a joke. He 
affects a felicitous blend of a doctor's "bedside man 
ner" and the suave courtesy of a department-store 
floorwalker. This, in an engine room, is provocative 
of mirth. Mr. Ferguson, who is already overdue, 
guffaws with rolHcking abandon when Mr. de Courcy 
emits one of his refined and ladyhke remarks. If 
Mr. de Courcy has the smoothness of oil — lubricating 
oil — Mr. Ferguson has the harsh detergence of 
water — strong water. However, as I make a hasty 
pilgrimage into the stokehold and discover four 
stokers and a coal-passer enjoying a can of tea, it 
occurs to me that if Mr. Ferguson doesn't appear 
soon, it will be necessary to take steps. 

II 

I COME back to the engine room, to find Mr. Fer- 
guson descending the engine-room ladder, in a white 
singlet, khaki short pants, striped socks with red 



THE CRUSADERS 31 

suspenders, and tennis shoes. The inevitable cigar- 
ette is in his mouth, and his cap, the white cover 
of which is stained a chrome yellow with oil-splashes, 
is over one eye in a negligent and rakish manner. 
He is a tall strong figure of thirty-odd, his face 
freckled, his nose twisted, his hair of an Irish flame- 
red. His voice is stupendously frank and genial, 
and he disarms criticism with the wealth of his con- 
fessions. He is one of the world's unfortunates, 
he will inform you gaily. (You are bound to meet 
him.) 

Just now he is making a specialty of courts- 
martial. He is continually being court-martialled. 
He belongs to an obscure and elusive subdivision 
of the Navy known as the M. F. A., which is, being 
interpreted. Merchant Fleet Auxiliary, though Mr. 
Ferguson asserts with racial satire that the initials 
stand for Merely FooHng Around. This indicates 
one of his main difficulties, which is to realize that 
he is subject to naval discipline. It is to him an 
intolerable state of aflTairs, when he becomes pleas- 
antly jingled ashore in Arab-town, and flings a 
wine bottle at a native, that he should be appre- 
hended by a silent and formidable posse of blue- 
jackets with hangers at their sides and police bras- 
sards on their arms. It is still more intolerable 
when, after joyously beating up said posse and being 
carried by main force to the cells in the barracks, 
he is informed by typed letter that, having been 



32 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer, he will be 
tried by court-martial on such-and-such a date. 
He seems unable to comprehend the sudden change 
in the attitude of the naval authorities. Only a few 
weeks previously he had been one of the crew of a 
trawler which had, more by luck than cunning, 
caught an enemy submarine recharging her depleted 
batteries, and methodically pounded her to pieces 
until she filled and sank. Mr. Ferguson's part in 
the drama was to stand on the bottom rung of his 
little engine-room ladder, with his head just above 
the scuttle, and remark after each salvo, with keen 
enjoyment, **Good again! Hit her up, boys!" for 
which he duly received in cold cash five hundred 
dollars of prize-money. Mr. Ferguson's interviews 
with sums over a hundred dollars have been fleet- 
ing, shadowy episodes of coruscating and evanes- 
cent brilliancy. It was even so on this occasion. 
The native world that hives and swarms adown the 
narrow and filth-cluttered alleys of Arab-town profited 
vastly at Mr. Ferguson's expense. He was regal in 
his largess. His method of flinging money abroad 
and kicking the recipients appealed to their Oriental 
instincts. In two days he had cleaned up the town, 
from can-can dances to hashish parties in the dis- 
used mosque behind the wall of the Jewish cemetery; 
and he was samphng for the third time the ex- 
quisite transmigrations which befall the soul when 
steeped in Turkish gin, as the posse already men- 



THE CRUSADERS 33 

tioned broke into Ali Ben Farag's Constantinople 
Divan for Officers Only, and bore him back 
to barracks under the quiet eyes of the Syrian 
stars. 

The fact is, Mr. Ferguson is temperamentally 
averse to discipline. He is one of those to whom 
the war is of no moment whatever. His patriotism 
is more a postulated abstraction than a glowing 
inspiration. He is one of those rootless organisms 
which float hither and yon over the world, indigenous 
nowhere, at home everywhere. They fall into no 
categories of wisdom or virtue, for they have the 
active yet passionless inconclusiveness of inteUigent 
lower animals. They bear no malice and suffer no 
regret. They leave a memory without making a 
name. They resolve their personal belongings to 
the irreducible minimum of a battered and padlocked 
sea-bag. Their cabins contain neither curios nor con- 
veniences, neither photographs nor tokens of femin- 
ine affection. They have a far look in their pale 
eyes, and one wonders what distant and delightful 
haven they are already visualizing. For them there 
is no continuing city. They must on — on! pressing 
forward in blind ardour toward a retreating paradise 
whence, even were they to arrive, they would im- 
mediately prepare to depart. They are the true 
romantics of our age. Grimy, dissolute, and in- 
competent, they pass gaily through our orderly 
and discipHned crowds of unimaginative reahsts 



34 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

who do the work of the world, and brush off upon 
us stray threads of golden fancy, fallen from the 
clouds of tarnished glory which they trail behind 
them. 

Having reached the starting platform, Mr. Fer- 
guson halts and collects his apparently scattered 
faculties. Although under what is known in the 
Navy as **open arrest," he has contrived to get ashore 
by means of one of those preposterous yet plausible 
excuses which only the romantic can devise. He 
is now in the no-man's land between intoxication 
and sobriety, and stands with his tennis shoes 
wide apart, the muscles of his legs distending the 
scarlet straps of his garters, and his stony stare fixed 
upon Mr. de Courcy, who patrols the platform in 
front of the engines. 

No man can gaze for long upon Mr. de Courcy 's 
refined and genteel physiognomy without perceiving 
the fundamental absurdity of the universe. Mr. de 
Courcy is a gentleman of good family who, by some 
mysterious dispensation, evaded the normal destiny 
of his type; for, instead of entering him for holy 
orders, his family, who I understand are **county," 
shipped him to a Central American oil field, where 
for some years he occupied an obscure position 
on the engine-room staff. My own impression is 
that he would be better in the Church, in business, 
in the House of Lords, in the Army — anywhere 
save in a ship's engine room. He has the ineradica- 



THE CRUSADERS 35 

ble predisposition of his class to treat the actual 
performance of a job of work as derogatory to his 
dignity. He assures me that in the Navy, by which 
he means regular men-of-war, he was not required 
to do the unpleasant things that I regard as his 
daily portion. His delicately chiselled features flush 
faintly behind the veil of cigarette smoke as he re- 
grets the violence of my language and the wild 
impropriety of my metaphors. Nothing, however, 
can ruflie the eternal and hereditary conviction 
in which he reposes, that he and his like are of finer 
clay, that race and gentility are adequate substitutes 
for achievement. 

Whether Mr. Ferguson focuses the precise and 
piquant differences between himself and Mr. de 
Courcy it would be difl&cult to discover; but as he 
gazes, the stony stare softens, the drawn Hnes of his 
reddish freckled face crinkle into laughter, and the 
bony ridge of his twisted nose glistens humorously. 
He is finding himself. None of the stimulants 
of Western civihzation has much power over Mr. 
Ferguson. They only dim his brightness for a brief 
period, and not even the most corrosive of cocktails 
can permanently affect the hard lustre of his incon- 
sequent optimism. With a short laugh, like a dog's 
bark, he swings past me and dives round behind 
the engines, and, liftmg a movable plate in the plat- 
form, investigates hurriedly among divers cocks 
and valves, as if he had suddenly remembered a 



36 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

buried treasure, and was reassuring himself as to its 
exact whereabouts. 



Ill 

In the meantime we are standing by. From above 
comes the blast of the first lieutenant's whistle, as 
he presides over the doings of his minions. It is, 
for all the lateness of the season, intensely hot. The 
armies in Palestine report a heat-wave of unparalleled 
length and temperature. And even here, with a 
breeze blowing in from the Mediterranean, the 
thermometer remains at 90 degrees all day, and 
our rooms are hke ovens until the small hours. 

Mr. de Courcy goes into the stoke-hold, to get a 
breath of fresh air. The oiler slowly descends from 
above and moves in and out among the engines on 
the middle grating, filHng lubricators, adjusting 
siphon-wicks and pausing for a well-earned spell 
under the after ventilator. As I make a gesture in- 
dicating the astern guide-bars he replies with a 
slight raising of his left hand (with a cigarette in 
the fingers), which may be interpreted somewhat on 
these lines: "Have no fear. I have attended to the 
lubrication of the astern guides, and am not likely, 
at my time of life, to neglect so trifling a precaution. 
Rest easy. I was doing this when you were a boy.'' 

What mystifies me about all these men of mine 
is the new lease of life they have taken since the 
orders for steam came. They take a fresh interest 



THE CRUSADERS 37 

in everything. They had become slack, lacka- 
daisical, and ^ ^eoccupied with ridiculous grievances. 
They went ashore and brought back tales of all 
disasters told them by the motley-clad survivors 
of torpedoed ships. They muttered openly in my 
hearing that they desired to be shifted to a ship 
that went to sea. And now, so far are they from 
appreciating the heroic, that their attitude by no 
means resembles the gladiators of old, with their 
lugubrious "Hail, Caesar! we who are about to die 
salute thee." Nothing is farther from their thoughts 
than dying, though two submarines broke into our 
sweepers four miles outside last night and sank three 
of them. Their attitude is much better rendered 
as "Hail, Caesar! we who are about to get busy 
salute thee.'' They come down on the stroke of 
eight bells, watch after watch, and pursue the even 
tenor of their ways, cigarette in mouth and oil can 
or shovel in hand, and seem never to visualize the 
oncoming destruction that may be ripping through 
the dark water outside. Pooh! Such anticipations 
are foreign to their nature, which seems to have been 
toughened into an admirable closeness of texture 
by the frightful climate of their native islands and 
the indurating labour of the sea. 

So we pause, waiting at our allotted stations for 
the orders, which come at last with a clash and jingle 
of gongs; the telegraph-pointer swings to and fro 
and comes to rest at "Stand by.'' Mr. de Courcy 



38 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

immediately replies with an elegant manipulation 
of the handle, and records the time on a little black- 
board at his elbow. The Chief, a tall, lank young 
man in a soiled white uniform, ripples half way 
down the upper ladder and catches my eye, raising 
his eyebrows the while. I nod, and he makes a slow 
circular gesture. I nod again. I ask Mr. Ferguson 
if he is ready. He straightens up where he stands 
by the main feed-pumps, waves his hand with a mag- 
nificent air, and says "Let her go, Gallagher!" 

Assisted by Mr. de Courcy, I let her go. The 
immense limbs of the triple-expansion engines 
flourish back and forth, and come to rest as I close 
the manoeuvring-valve. Mr. Ferguson prances to 
and fro in front of the pumps, starting-lever in 
hand, his head twisted round to observe the be- 
haviour of the automatic control. He lays the 
lever over his shoulder like a weapon, and in the 
dim twilight he reminds me, with his bare white 
calves crossed by the scarlet garter-straps, of some 
Roman legionary on guard. Faithful unto 

But Mr. Ferguson would deprecate the suggestion. 
He had never been faithful unto anything. Loyalty 
is not his metier. His digressions from the path of 
righteousness usually provide him with a free pass 
to the great outdoors, the wide free world in which 
he is a joyous and insolvent pilgrim. He is puzzled 
at this novel attitude of the Navy, which, instead 
of firing him without a reference, oppresses him with 



THE CRUSADERS 39 

typed forms and a periodical court-martial, which 
sentences him to be "dismissed his ship." He will 
never realize that to those who are brought up 
within the charmed circle of the officer-class, such 
a sentence is tantamount to a death warrant. Heh! 
Give him his pay and he'll quit. Yes, sir! He 
didn't know he was marrying the darned business. 
What's eating them anyway .^^ There's a war on? 
Nobody'd think it, to hear those popinjays talk 
about conduct unbecoming an officer. Huh! It's 
a dog's life, sure. 

Now the fact is that when, hereafter, you meet 
Mr. Ferguson, shaking the dust of the Nevada 
copper mines from his feet in disgust, or hustling 
about the levees at New Orleans in search of a job 
as an oiler, or lounging on the water-front at Port 
Limon, waiting for a chance to stow away on a 
fruiter, he will speak of his Hfe in the British Navy, 
with a break in his voice and his pale eyes full of 
happy tears. Ah, those were the days! he will tell 
you. A man was treated as a man there. And so on. 

This is the mark of the true romantic. It must 
be a fascinating existence. One feels a perfect 
Pecksniff in the presence of beings whose imagina- 
tions are for ever ahead of their experience. They 
are but strangers here: heaven is their home. One 
has the impression, while driving them to their 
appointed tasks amid the humid heat and noisy 
chaffering ot an engine room, of employing shackled 



40 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

angels whose wings have been cHpped close and who 
have had their tail-feathers pulled out. And they 
certainly regard one as a demon with an inexplicable 
passion for toil, a creature without vision and with- 
out hope beyond the immediate accomplishment of 
senseless labour, a slave-driver owing allegiance to 
a secret and sinister authority which they generally 
call Capitahsm. 

Mr. Ferguson is eloquent on the subject of capital- 
ists. This, he assures me, is a capitalists' war. 
Look, he cries, at the poor simps being butchered in 
France, all to fill the capitalists' bags with gold! 
Even their own children have to go. Nothing is 
sacred to a capitalist save his *'bags of gold." It is 
the mark of the true romantic to be preoccupied 
with symbols, and Mr. Ferguson is partial to the 
gorgeous imagery of modern anarchism. 

However, it must not be assumed that Mr. 
Ferguson and I are deadly enemies because of the 
incompatibility of our ideals. He is graciously 
pleased to overlook what he calls my funny ideas, 
and rewards me with thumbnail sketches of episodes 
in his career. It was so on this occasion as we sailed 
out to join the squadron off Askalon. Mr. de 
Courcy having gone up to get his supper, and the 
telegraph having rung **full ahead," Mr. Ferguson 
fell into a vein of reminiscence, and told me tales 
of '*the happy days that are no more." With one 
eye on the revolution telegraph and the other on 



1 



THE CRUSADERS 41 

the steam- and air-gauges, I listen to his Odyssey. 
For there is a streak of poetry in him, as I have en- 
deavoured to adumbrate. All unconsciously, and 
with a far look in his pale blue eyes, he beholds a 
picture. From the hell of the Present he sees a 
happy Past and a heavenly Future. He can com- 
municate atmosphere, and when he remarks that 
once, in Liverpool, it came over him that he ought 
to settle down and be respectable, I am alert at 
once. I could see it **coming over him" — the footsore, 
jaded wanderer treading the bright dirty streets; 
the smart pretty landlady's daughter leading him 
by swift short stages to see how desirable was a small 
house at Sefton Park or Garston; the patient search 
for employment, ending in a job on the shore-gang 
of the White Star Line. For a fortnight all went 
well. He was thinking of getting engaged. 

To my disappointment, he slides all too easily from 
this momentous and interesting subject to a whim- 
sical description of his adventures on the rriammoth 
liners on which he was employed. He tells how, 
while working in the low-pressure valve-chest of the 
Gigantic's port engine, he slipped and fell through 
the exhaust-pipe into the main condenser. He 
pictures the consternation of his helper, who had 
gone for a tool, when he found his mate vanished; 
the efforts to locate his muffled shouts; the tappings 
of hammers, the footsteps, the hoarse murmurs 
broken by an occasional *'Hi! where areyer, mate?" 



42 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

and his replies, stifled by his own laughter. It is 
perfectly plain that this sort of thing was more to 
Mr. Ferguson's taste than humdrum industry. 
When he was finally fished out at the end of a coil of 
rope, the leading hand threatened him with dis- 
missal if it occurred again; for the leading hand was 
not romantic, only a soul besotted with efficiency. 

And on the Oceanic again these two fell foul of 
each other, for Mr. Ferguson lost his way on the 
boiler-tops. He asserts that there were hundreds of 
boilers on that ship, all alike, and thousands of 
ladders. He grew fascinated with the problem 
as he groped up and down, through cross-bunkers, 
in and out of fan-rooms, for ever encountering fresh 
boilers, but never the one where he had been working. 
But the third time that leading hand found him far 
from his job he became explosive and personal, 
led Mr. Ferguson firmly by the arm through inter- 
minable corridors, until his boiler stood dimly revealed 
through a manhole, and informed him that it was 
his last chance. Mr. Ferguson grew resentful. 
As if he could help it! Silly, he calls it, to get in a 
rage over a little thing like that. However, that's 
the sort of man he was. Only got himself dis- 
liked. And just out of petty spite, he orders him, 
Mr. Ferguson to wit, to work all night overtime on 
a rush job. 

Mr. Ferguson has strong views on night work, as 
I can testify. He imagines the capitalists ought to 



THE CRUSADERS 43 

be satisfied when they have spoiled a man's day, 
without gouging into the hours of rest. Hurrying 
to his lodgings, he had his tea, and the landlady's 
daughter made him up a packet of sandwiches and a 
can of cocoa, to be warmed on a steampipe when he 
needed it. You can see them there, slogging away 
through the night, stripping an auxiliary engine and 
erecting the new one, pausing about midnight for a 
snack and a smoke. And while the engineer on 
watch is having forty winks, one of the gang becomes 
confidential with Mr. Ferguson and reveals a dis- 
covery. One of the storerooms where electrical 
gear is kept has been left open. And he knows a 
scrap-metal merchant who and so on. 

Mr. Ferguson becomes vague just here. Well, 
I know how it is, he suggests. One thing leads to 
another. You can easily pack a lot of sheet rubber 
round you and nobody be any the wiser. Nobody 
was, apparently, until a day or so later. Mr. 
Ferguson arrived home for a late supper, having 
been standing treat to the boys after a boxing tourna- 
ment, when Maggie — that was his girl, you see — 
met him at the door with wide serious eyes. Two 
men had called to see him, she said, and she knew 
one of them was a detective — she'd seen him before 
when she'd been to the station about having had her 
pocket picked. What had he done? 

Well, by now, Mr. Ferguson knew well enough 
what he had done, and it is not in the nature of 



44 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

true romantics to deny anything. With Maggie's 
eyes searching his face and Maggie's hands clutching 
his coat, he backed against the Uttle near-mahogany 
hall stand and admitted that it might be awkward 
if they came back again, as they would when they 
couldn't find him elsewhere. They stood there, 
those two — the girl in an agony of sorrow and fear, 
with a maternal desire to shield the big silly, he 
devising some way of quitting. And as they stood 
there, they heard footsteps at the end of the silent 
street. Mr. Ferguson must have stiffened. He 
says, in his Celtic way, that he felt his hair move. 
Maggie stuck his cap on and dragged him through 
the kitchen into the scullery. She opened the door 
softly, pushed him out, and followed him into the 
tiny yard. Quick, over the wall at the bottom, into 
the next garden! The house is empty; go through 
and out of the front door into the side street. Run ! 

Yes, write and she'd tell him run! And she 

darted into the house to face the future alone. 

Mr. Ferguson followed her instructions. I am 
convinced that he enjoyed himself immensely that 
evening. He dropped over the wall and put his foot 
through a cucumber-frame, it is true, but the 
light crash and jingle only set off two cats at frantic 
speed. He also fell over something in the hall of 
the empty house and skinned his knuckles. He 
says he has often wondered what it was. Once 
in the quiet suburban street, with two lovers saying 



THE CRUSADERS 45 

good-night under a lamp-post far down on the other 
side, he walked unobtrusively away. It was char- 
acteristic of him that he didn't write, and therefore 
never heard any more of the affair. He rode on a 
trolley car away out into the suburbs of Liverpool, 
and then took a train a little way farther. It was 
autumn, and he began to walk through England. 

We are interrupted by a youthful sailor, who comes 
down with a chit from the bridge, a chit which 
informs me that, having joined the other vessels 
of the squadron, we are ordered to proceed at ten 
knots, and the commander will appreciate it if we 
can maintain the revolutions at fifty, so as to keep 
station. Mr. Ferguson laughs satirically, and says 
the old feller ought to boil his head. This after 
the youthful sailor has gone up again. I agree that 
a ship forty years old is a problem when it comes 
to "keeping station." "There you are!" says Mr. 
Ferguson, and conceives his animus against all 
constituted authority to be only too well founded. 
"And here comes Pinhead Percy," he mutters, as 
Mr. de Courcy descends, a gold-tipped cigarette 
in his lips, and with an engaging smile. Leaving 
him to carry on, we go up to dinner. 

IV 

It is a quarter to four next morning when the ward- 
room steward on night duty brings me a cup of tea 
and a bloater-paste sandwich. 



46 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

"Anything doing?" I inquire, rolling over to reach 
the cup. 

He murmurs that he thinks we're going half speed 
and the airmen are all dressing. 

"See anything yet?" 

"Oh, yes, you can see artillery at it ashore," he 
observes casually. 

I sit up. It has not been my lot to behold artillery 
at it ashore, so I swallow the tea, dress hurriedly, and 
go out on deck. It is still dark, but away to star- 
board hangs a peculiar faint glow. At intervals 
this glow brightens and quivers, and the brightening 
and quivering is followed by a sound like the distant 
closing of a heavy door. Ahead and astern of us are 
ships keeping station, black blots in the indeterminate 
mingling of sky and sea. At intervals one can make 
out smaller blots moving restlessly hither and yon, 
passing and repassing, turning and gliding with silent 
and enigmatic persistence toward unknown goals. 

I yawn, conclude that these small craft are saving 
us the fatigue of zigzagging, and go below. Mr. 
Ferguson is descending the ladder just in front of 
me. Mr. de Courcy, a slender wraith in white over- 
alls, appears at the other door of the engine room, and 
follows. Eight faint strokes sound on the bell-bar 
below, very faint, out of consideration for enemy 
underwater craft who may be, and in fact are, 
listening in tense vigilance not far away. It is four 
o'clock. 



THE CRUSADERS 47 

The engineer going off watch hands me a chit from 
the Chief to the effect that the planes will be launched 
at daybreak, when I am to call him. Good enough! 
We carry on, and presently the revolution-gongs 
begin to clatter, now more, now less, and through the 
skylight one can see the sky beginning to lighten. 

Mr. Ferguson lounges to and fro, as I stand by the 
manoeuvring-valve, and whistles "I wanter go back, I 
wanter go back, to the place where I was born." It 
occurs to me that this is an engaging fiction. I doubt 
very much if he would care to bo back there — some- 
where on the western edge of Ulster. He once said 
his adventures might go into a book. What he 
ought to have said was that his adventures might 
have come out of a book; for, though he is com- 
municative, he says very little about himself. It is 
the adventure which interests him, not the biography 
of the adventurer. He has the happy love of 
incognito which is the mark of your true romantic. 
It happened to him, certainly. Well, it was this 
way And off he goes. 

Off he went as I inquired where he walked when he 
started away through England. Well, his boots wore 
out first, being his thin patents, and he bought a pair 
of heavy country shoes, with soles all hobnails and 
great horseshoe-shaped flangings on the heels. Once 
he had suppled them, they were fine walking-gear. 
And he went on into Yorkshire and down through 
Lincolnshire, doing a job of work here and a chore or 



48 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

two there for the cxDuntry-folk, and marvelhng how 
empty England seemed. Almost as empty as the sea, 
he remarks. But of course he was taking a line that 
took him past the big cities. He slept in sheds and 
under hay-ricks. 

Once he strolled into the huge garage of a hunting- 
hotel in Leicestershire, and got into a palatial 
limousine in a far corner, and slept like a duke. 
Note the metaphor. Your true romantic preserves 
the faith in fairyland, for all his gross ineptitudes and 
tawdry sociological taradiddles. Mr. Ferguson slept 
like a duke. Don't imagine, however, that he is ig- 
norant of dukes. He knows more of them than 
either you or I, who have never seen one, and who 
are unfamiliar with the habits of the species. 

Mr. Ferguson has told me the pathetic story of his 
efforts to make a fresh start in life when he had 
exhausted the resources and the patience of his 
native hamlet. As usual, he was vague at points, 
but I imagine it was the old poaching business that 
induced the irate Bench to lock him up. And when 
he emerged, a pale, lathy emblem of repentance, it 
was decreed by an outraged parent that he should 
emigrate to England, said parent having a brother 
who was a locomotive-driver on a branch line. The 
idea was to interest Master Ferguson in locomotives, 
and in the sylvan loveliness of East Anglia set his 
feet in the paths of virtue. 

So it fell out, and Mr. Ferguson found himself 



THE CRUSADERS 49 

cleaning freight engines in a barn at the end of a 
branch hne. It was a branch on a branch — almost 
a twig line in fact, he impHes, whimsically. It 
seems that his uncle was a driver distinguished far 
above other drivers, inasmuch as he hauled the train 
which was appointed to stop on occasion at the duke's 
private station on the twig line. And the duke in 
question often availed himself of the well-known 
eccentricity of the ducal classes by riding on the foot- 
plate instead of in his reserved compartment. This 
sounds far-fetched, no doubt, to democrats, but it is 
quite credible. Dukes have more sense than many 
people give them credit for. Possibly, too, this 
particular duke was a true romantic himself, and was 
only realizing in his maturity what every boy desires 
— to ride on the foot-plate. And hence it turned 
out that Mr. Ferguson found himself in possession 
of a relative who knew a duke. 

The pity of it was that Mr. Ferguson could not be 
induced to display any particular aptitude or mark 
of genius which would justify any one in bringing 
him to the notice of the family liege lord. 

One gets a glimpse of feudal England while 
listening to Mr. Ferguson's account of that happy 
valley, with its twig line of railway, rabbits and hares 
and pheasants visible on the single track during the 
long hours between the twig trains, the vast ducal 
seat showing its high turrets and gold-leaf window- 
frames among the ancestral trees, the little village. 



50 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

snuggled along the ducal fence, owned lock, stock, 
and barrel by the romantic foot-plate rider, and 
wrapped in immemorial quiet. All except Mr. 
Ferguson. He was Hvely when he was young, he 
admits, and apt to be a bit wild. A game-keeper 
spoke with unwonted feeling to the uncle one eve- 
ning at the Cow Roast Inn on the subject of slaying 
game birds with stones. Mr. Ferguson, attacked 
by ennuiy had sauntered down the track one day and 
done this frightful deed, visible to an indignant game- 
keeper concealed in a neighbouring copse. A lad 
with an eye good enough to hit a bird with a stone at 
thirty yards or so ought to be playing county cricket 
or serving in the Army, he observed, wiping his mouth. 
His lordship wasn't as stern as he rnight be on the 
subject of preserving. Indeed, I have a notion, born 
of Mr. Ferguson's fugitive hints, that this particular 
lordship had certain rudimentary views on the 
importance of preserving other things besides game — 
humanity, for instance, and kindhness and Christian 
charity and a sense of humour. Anyhow, when the 
incident came to his ears, he expressed a desire 
to do something for the youth beyond sending him 
to jail. Riding up the twig line on the foot-plate to 
join the express for London, he ordered his henchman 
to bring the guilty nephew before him for interroga- 
tion. So it was done, and one day Mr. Ferguson, a 
gawky hobbledehoy with wild red hair standing every 
which-way on his turbulent head, was ushered into 



THE CRUSADERS 51 

one of the vast chambers of the ducal mansion — 
ushered in and left alone. His acute misery was 
rendered almost unendurable by the fact that an 
expanse of shimmering parquetry separated him 
from the nearest chair. For a moment he had a wild 
notion of crossing this precarious floor on his hands 
and knees. For yet another moment he thought of 
flight. Even the marble steps up which he had 
ascended from the side entrance was preferable to this 
dark shining mirror in which he could see the room 
upside down and his own scared face. 

And then a door opened on the other side of the 
room, and a majestic butler appeared, followed by 
His Grace himself in a smoking-jacket of peacock- 
blue silk with old-gold frogs and piping. The butler 
beckoned sternly The duke, going to a desk in the 
corner and sitting down, beckoned amiably. The 
perspiration broke from Mr. Ferguson's scalp, 
and the tickling of his hair nearly drove him dis- 
tracted. He essayed a step, quailed, and drew back 
to the friendly bear-skin. The majestic butler made 
an imperious gesture that brooked no delay. The 
duke looked round in innocent surprise. Mr. 
Ferguson, clutching at his cap, flaming in hair and 
visage, and nursing in his heart a new-born hatred 
of the governing classes and their insane luxury, 
started hastily across the glassy surface, slipped, 
recovered by a miracle that left a deep scratch and a 
heel-dent on the floor, wavered, stumbled, deployed 



52 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

sideways, and finally, in one last desperate grasp at 
equilibrium, threw himself backward, whereupon 
his heels both shot forward from under him, he fell 
with a terrible thud full length, and lay still, waiting 
with closed eyes for death. 

But of course the days when he would have been 
taken out and beheaded were long gone by. Life is 
more complicated now. The majestic seneschal, 
instead of clapping his hands and summoning men- 
at-arms to remove the clumsy varlet, rushed forward 
and assisted the unfortunate to his feet, looking 
horror-stricken at the scratches, and supporting him 
to the small but priceless Armenian carpet where sat 
the duke, at his desk, laughing heartily. 

A good sort of duke I surmise; but Mr. Ferguson 
will not admit it. He hates the whole race of 
^'popinjays," as he calls them. Even the beneficence 
which followed — a complete colonial kit and fifty 
pounds to start life in the great Northwest — does 
not soften his asperity. He thinks as little of the 
great Northwest as of the House of Lords or the 
Royal Navy. It was the beginning of his odyssey, 
at all events. How he sold his colonial kit in 
Manitoba and got a job as a bartender, and later a 
job as a trolley driver, and later a job as something 
else, cannot be set out at length. Mr. Ferguson may 
some day ampHfy his tantalizing allusions. I hope 
to learn more of his matrimonial adventures in the 
Argentine. 



THE CRUSADERS 53 

In the meantime I must return to the tale he told 
me as we worked the engines to and fro, and the ship 
worked in close to the shore of the Holy Land, off 
Askalon, and the monitors and cruisers took up their 
positions around us, and the planes were swung out 
and soared away over the enemy's lines round 
Gaza. It was a long hot day for all of us; longer and 
hotter for the Turks, I fancy, for our guns broke their 
great stone bridges and blew up their dumps, and 
destroyed their batteries, and they fell back and 
back and back until they had lost horse, foot, and 
guns, and tortured Syria was free from them for ever. 

Mr. Ferguson and I have to take a good deal of this 
for granted. We hear the thunder of the capstans 
and the shouting, but in our breasts flames no martial 
ardour. We are preoccupied with certain defects in 
our ancient engines, and fill up the intervals with an 
idle tale. 



Sleeping like a duke in a palatial limousine and hke a 
tramp under a hedge, after the fashion of the true 
romantics, Mr. Ferguson fared southward. It was a 
pleasant life withal, he observes, and he marvels that, 
as it is so easy, so few, comparatively speaking, adopt 
it. Perhaps for the same reason that he abandoned 
it, which was that he came to a town, and was lured 
once more into industry, unable to escape the wage- 
system, as he calls it, and then was blown by the 



54 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

winds of fortune out to sea once more. It must 
not be supposed that he is opposed in toto to the 
economic principle of wages. Indeed, one of his 
most attractive theories is that every man ought to 
have enough to Hve on without doing very much for 
it. "Twelve to one and an hour for lunch," as he 
phrases it in his picturesque way. Nor did he, as I 
have noted, object to an occasional diversion as a 
wage-slave, providing always that he could, at a 
moment's notice, move on. It was when the in- 
dustrial octopus reached out its steel tentacles and 
began feeling for his free wild spirit, to hold it for- 
ever, that he began to squirm and wriggle. Would 
have squirmed and wriggled in vain, probably, but 
for a fantastic denouement, as you shall see. 

As he talks, we become aware of events taking 
place outside. Mr. de Courcy, who has been up to 
call the Chief, reports our planes over the lines and 
Turkish machines making for us as we lie on the 
motionless blue water under the blazing forenoon 
sun. And presently, as we stand by, engines moving 
dead slow, destroyers and motor boats rushing in 
swift interweaving circles about us, a terrific con- 
cussion makes our old ship quiver to her iron keel, 
and the lights dance, and the boiler-casing trembles 
visibly, shaking a cloud of soot from the skirting and 
making us sneeze. A moment, and another tremen- 
dous explosion follows. Our planes are sending back 
the range, and the next ship, a monitor with fourteen- 



THE CRUSADERS 55 

inch guns, is sending her shells eight miles inland 
upon the bridges over which the enemy must retreat. 
At intervals six-inch guns from British cruisers and 
ten-inch guns on French ships join in the game, and a 
continuous fog of soot is maintained in my clean 
engine room. 

Mr. Ferguson is not concerned very much with this. 
Your true romantic has but small interest in the 
domestic virtues, and he considers that I worry un- 
necessarily about dirt in the engine room. With a 
passing sneer at capitalists, he deprecates worrying 
about anything; quotes a song which is very popular 
just now, and which clinches his argument neatly 
enough, and permits him to resume. 

For as he wandered here and there through 
England, it so chanced that he came upon a quiet 
valley through which ran a Httle river and a little 
railway very much like the twig line, reminding him 
of it and leading him to digress into that episode of 
the duke and the dead-beat, which I have already 
narrated. And standing at the head of this valley, 
some little way from the hamlet, was a factory of 
sorts, with a red-brick smokestack sending out a 
lazy dark-blue trail of smoke to mingle with the pale- 
blue mist of an autumn evening. 

Mr. Ferguson marvelled afresh at this anomalous 
affair, for the country was rural and for miles he had 
plodded among the fair fields of the "nook-shotten 
Isle of Albion." He was unfamiliar with southern 



S6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

and midland England, where you may come suddenly 
upon a boiler shop or a dynamo factory far from the 
coal and iron fields, where flowers grow along the 
foundry wall and the manager sits by a window 
screened with geraniums. 

It was some such place as this Mr. Ferguson had 
found when he realized that he had no money and 
it was necessary, at any rate, to truckle to capitahsts 
long enough to earn the price of a meal. Standing 
on the bridge over the httle river, he decided to '*see 
how the land lay up there.'' Quite apart from his 
bodily needs, he had the true romantic curiosity to 
know what they manufactured in this idyllic corner 
of an empty land. Indeed, that was his first ques- 
tion to the anxious-eyed foreman whom he found 
in deep converse with a manager on the gravel path 
outside an office covered with honeysuckle. They 
turned upon him and sized him up; asked him what 
he wanted to know for. What could he do.? Did he 
want a job.^^ Had he ever worked a lathe .f* Could 
he work a big one ? 

Almost before he realized it, these supposedly 
sleepy denizens of a forgotten fairyland had pushed 
him along the flower beds, through big sliding doors, 
past a trumpeting steam hammer and a tempestuous 
rotary blower, into a machine shop whose farther 
end was chiefly occupied by a face lathe to which 
was bolted an immense fly-wheel. And all those 
other machines, Mr. Ferguson assures me, were 



THE CRUSADERS 57 

manned by boys from school, who leaned over their 
slide-rests and regarded the dusty way-worn new- 
comer with pop-eyed interest. The manager and the 
foreman deployed on either side of their captive, and 
besought him to turn to and finish the fly-wheel, 
which was a rush job for a factory fifty miles away, 
and their only experienced machinist was ill in bed 
with pneumonia. 

Mr. Ferguson was intrigued. It was a dream, he 
imagined. Never in all his varied experience of a 
world darkened by capitalists had he ever heard the 
Kke of this: a capitahsts' minion imploring a toiler 
to toil, offering him a bonus if finished in three days, 
and time-and-a-half overtime for night work. He 
started to remove his coat, for the fever of action 
was infectious, and the foreman almost tore it from 
his back. Remarking that it was '*a week's work, in a 
general way," he found himself examining the rim, 
which was still rough, and sorting out the tools. 
Evidently regarding him as an angel sent from heaven 
to assist them in their extremity, foreman and 
manager backed away and watched him with shining 
eyes. And Mr. Ferguson, for once blinded to the 
madness of his action in trusting himself to the tender 
mercies of a hated industriahsm, turned to. 

And he worked. As Mr. de Courcy comes down 
and reports that enemy planes are overhead, and the 
telegraph gong rings sharply *Tull ahead," and 
our twelve-pounder anti-aircraft guns explode with 



58 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

full-throated bangs that astonish us with their un- 
accustomed anger, Mr. Ferguson assures me that he 
worked Hke a galley slave. He ignores Mr. de 
Courcy's delicate insinuation that the enemy is try- 
ing to sink us with bombs, and inquires passionately 
if I have ever turned a fourteen-foot fly-wheel in an 
old lathe. I never have, and he commands me never 
to try, especially if the lathe is too small and I am 
inexperienced at turning compound castings. 

Our three guns, keeping up a deafening fusillade 
of twelve-pounder shells into the blue sky, overpower 
even the fourteen-inch monsters on the next ship. 
We go *Tull ahead" for a few minutes, the steering- 
engine clattering Hke a mad thing as the helm is put 
to and fro. Mr. Ferguson resigns the telegraph 
to Mr. de Courcy and comes over to where I stand at 
the manoeuvring-valve. There is a smile on his 
reddish, freckled features, and the ridge of his twisted 
nose glistens in the swift, glancing reflections of the 
shining rods. 

'Tneumonia!" he whispers, with a far look in his 
eyes. That old machine was enough to give a man 
heart disease and brain fever, let alone pneumonia. 
More than once, just as he was finishing a cut, the 
wheel suddenly appeared out of true, and he had to 
invoke the aid of the boys from school and hydrauHc 
jacks from the store and a partially demented fore- 
man from his oflfice, who was in terror lest he, Mr. 
Ferguson, should throw up the billet. Mr. Fergu- 



THE CRUSADERS 59 

son was assured that, if he Hked, he could have 
permanent employment there, if he only made out 
successfully. 

Mr. Ferguson snorts at this. Imagine the fatuous 
idiocy of offering him a permanency, the one thing 
from which he eternally flies! And so he goes on 
hour after hour, struggling with the old machine, with 
the bubbly casting, with his own inexperience, with 
the greasy belts and poorly tempered tools. For 
this was in the old days, when much good work was 
done on worn-out machinery, when precision instru- 
ments were looked at askance, and a man had 
to have a certain dexterity of touch and experience of 
eye to evolve accuracy out of the rough material of a 
country shop. Mr. Ferguson has a great contempt 
for those old days in the abstract, though he for- 
gives them because of their romantic distance from 
him. 

But at length it came to pass, on the third evening, 
that he seemed about to achieve success, all that 
remained to be done to the outer rim being a finishing 
cut to give a fine smooth surface that would assume 
in time the silvery polish proper to well-bred fly- 
wheels. That was at tea-time, and when he returned 
from the cottage where an old woman was providing 
him with his meals and a bed for his scanty hours of 
sleep, he found the works deserted, save for the elderly 
engine-man who was to keep the shafting going dur- 
ing the night. It was understood that Mr. Ferguson 



Go HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

was to keep at it for this last night until he had com- 
pletely finished, so that the wheel might be slotted 
and shipped off first thing in the morning. A big 
naphtha flare hissing over his head, Mr. Ferguson 
leaned negligently on the narrow bench that ran 
along the wall behind him, and watched the tool 
gnawing softly at the slowly revolving wheel. What 
a hfe 1 he was thinking. The Hfe of a cog in a wheel, a 
deadly dull round of grinding toil, for a mere *'beg- 
garly pittance" — which is another of Mr. Ferguson's 
favourite phrases. Ninepence an hour, forsooth! 
And heaven only knows what this little sawed-off 
firm would make out of the transaction — hundreds 
of pounds, very likely. It was true that they had 
magnanimously advanced him three pounds on ac- 
count, two of which reposed in his jeans at the mo- 
ment; but that was only the devihsh cunning of the 
capitaHst class, to hold him in their clutches a little 
longer. 

However, it would soon be over. In the morning, 
after a good sleep at old Mrs. Thingummy's, he 
would step out once more and seek fresh woods and 
pastures new. 

What was that? He opened his eyes and noted 
that his much-vaunted finishing cut had revealed yet 
another blow-hole in the rim of the wheel — a big one 
too, darn it ! Well, that was the capitalists' look out. 
With folded arms he watched the blunt-nosed tool 
gnawing softly away at the gray powdery surface 



THE CRUSADERS 6i 

and then relapsed into gloomy introspection. He 
was bored. He was also tired. And when a man is 
both bored and tired, he tends to relinquish his hold 
upon the realities. The shop was full of mysterious 
shadows and pale glimmers as the belts flapped in 
listless agitation on the idler-pulleys. At the far 
end a wheel squeaked, and he could hear the leisurely 
rumble and cough of the steam-engine in its corru- 
gated house outside. Life? It was a living grave, 
cooped up here in a sort of iron mortuary, an im- 
prisoned spirit toihng in the service of a sinister 
genie. Bump again 1 That blow-hole must be quite 
a big affair. It would need another cut to clean it 
out of the wheel. More work. More ninepences. 
More truckling to the mercenary spirit of the age. 

But the soft murmur of the lathe was very sooth- 
ing, and in spite of his bitterness of spirit, Mr. 
Ferguson grew drowsy. His head nodded over 
his folded arms. He grew more than drowsy. He 
slept. 

Mr. Ferguson does not know how long or how often 
he slept and awakened. He remembers vaguely 
that time and again he did something or other to the 
slide-rest, or perhaps adjusted the tool for another 
cut. It must have been past two in the morning any- 
way, when the grand catastrophe overtook him, for 
soon after came daylight in the little wood where he 
slept till noon. But as he stood there, nodding over 
his folded arms, he became aware of a great noise 



62 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

in his ears and a stertorous rumble of disintegrating 
material; and straightening up, he was horrified at 
what he thought at first was a nightmare woven out 
of his long toil and trouble. There was a spatter of 
sparks from the tool as it broke and flew asunder, and 
the whole fourteen-foot wheel was caught on the rest 
and was rising, rising, like some dreadful destiny, and 
hovering over him. 

He stood in an ecstasy of expectation, petrified with 
an unearthly desire to know what would happen 
next. It rose and rose until balanced above him, 
pausing while the last holding bolt was sheared from 
the face-plate and fell into the heap of turnings be- 
low. And then, in a sublime epicycloidal curve, it 
descended, crashed lightly through the brick wall 
behind the bench, smothering him in broken mortar 
and plaster-dust, trundled leisurely across the yard, 
and striking a prostrate cement-grinder that lay up- 
ended awaiting repair, fell with a hollow boom among 
the debris. 

Mr. Ferguson reached for his coat in a sort of 
trance. The thing was unbelievable, but it is your 
true romantic who takes advantage of the un- 
believable. With one look round at the ghostly 
shadows of the little shop, he leaped upon the bench 
and out through the hole in the wall. And in a few 
minutes he was on the road leading up out of the 
valley, breasting the hill in the small hours, seeking 
afresh the adventures he craved, and musing with a 



THE CRUSADERS 63 

meditative eye upon the scene at which he regretfully- 
relinquished all idea of being present when day broke 
and the result of his labours was discovered. 

VI 

Mr. Ferguson pauses as a couple of crashes resound 
near by. We look at each other in some trepidation. 
The Chief runs lightly half way down the ladder, 
waves his hand in a complicated manner, and 
rapidly ascends out of sight. Another crash — or 
perhaps crash does not convey the meaning. At the 
risk of appearing meticulous, one may say that 
those Turkish bombs now dropping around the ship 
sound to us below as if several thousand waiters, 
each with a tray of glasses, had fallen down some 
immense marble staircase in one grand debacle. 

**Good Heavens! what's that?" says Mr. Ferguson. 

Mr. de Courcy mentions what it is, in his opinion. 

**Fancy!'' says Mr. Ferguson, staring hard at the 
young gentleman. 

I don't think these two have ever made each other 
out yet- As a true romantic, Mr. Ferguson is doubt- 
ful of Mr. de Courcy's credentials. He suspects 
him of being one of those whom he calls **popinjays," 
and a conventional popinjay at that. 

What Mr. de Courcy suspects, no man has ever 
discovered. I sometimes think he is one of those 
people who have no real existence of their own, who 
are evoked only by a conventional necessity, and 



64 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

who, if you were to go to them as you go to those 
whom you love or hate, would be found to have 
vanished. I am always prepared, when I open Mr. 
de Courcy's cabin door, to find it empty, swept and 
garnished, the bed neat, untouched, the washstand 
closed, and a faint musty smell in the air. I cannot 
believe in his existence save when I behold him; and 
even then the long elegant fingers manipulating the 
gold-tipped cigarette, the tolerantly benignant smile, 
the jaunty pose, the mincing gait, suddenly assail me 
without any corresponding conviction that there is 
a human being concealed an3rwhere behind them. 
He is uncanny that way, and Mr. Ferguson feels it 
without understanding it. 

As we climb the ladder, the Chief and the Third En- 
gineer having relieved us until the bombs have ceased 
dropping, Mr. Ferguson admits that the young fellow 
**makes him afraid to live, sometimes" — a cryptic 
phrase. We lean on the bulwarks and watch the 
performances of our airmen chasing the Turks. Or 
is it the Turks chasing ours.? We are not sufficiently 
versed in these warlike matters to decide. Ashore, 
on the long strip of yellow sand, we see the British 
Army on the march. We see the shrapnel bursting 
into black plumes ahead of them, and the sharp 
darts of flame from the ruins to the northward, where 
the Turks are working a battery to cover their re- 
treat. We see the shrapnel, and the quick wink of 
heliographs from inland beyond the dunes. Some- 



THE CRUSADERS 65 

one points, and at length, after much searching, we 
descry one of our machines, a mere dot in the blue, 
over the Turkish fort. 

This, mark you, is war. It has the precision of 
clockwork. It is clockwork. The huge squat moni- 
tor next us slowly swivels her turret toward the fort. 
One of the fourteen-inch muzzles rears, moves up and 
down and to and fro, as a man moves his neck in his 
collar. 

**Now then," breathes Mr. Ferguson, **here we go 

gathering nuts and may, nuts and may, nuts and 

Gee! Now, I ask you," he says, after a pause be- 
tween the explosion and the sudden rise of a tall 
plume of yellow smoke over the Turkish fort, **Now, 
I ask you, as one man to another, what is the use of 
all this.^ Think of those men in that " 

A shrapnel shell fired by a methodical and business- 
like Turkish gunner drops between us and a racing 
motor-launch, bursts with a damp thump, and spat- 
ters one or two fragments against the ship's sides. 

Mr. Ferguson stops short, and looks offended. 
"No, but is it" he insists, not sparing me his oratory, 
"Here we are, wasting precious lives and money and 
so on, all at the bidding of the capitalistic classes. 
Isn't it silly? Isn't it sickening.? Isn't it wicked? 
Why shouldn't the workers " 

"Below there! Stand by to hoist in planes!" 
sings out the C.P.O.; and instantly we are thrust 
aside as a swarm of men range themselves along the 



66 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

rail. A plane flutters slowly over the water, one 
float smashed, wings slit, observer looking rather sick 
with a bullet in his thigh. 

Well, he will get a medal, never fear. According 
to Mr. Ferguson, every airman receives three medals 
a week, just as he receives three meals a day. He 
is so bitter about it, you would think it was a personal 
grievance. That is his way. He thrives on griev- 
ances, as no dull realist could ever thrive on good 
fortune. The whole war is one gigantic grievance. 
Society is a festering sore and humanity a bad joke, 
posterity a bad dream. So he tells me. 

Yet I have my own view. I have set it out here 
in a way. I see Mr. Ferguson away ahead, at peace 
let us hope, in some Home for Aged and Deserving 
Seamen, and I hear him teUing the children round 
his wheel-chair how the Great War was fought, and 
how he too was there, as witness the medal with the 
faded ribbon on his breast. There is no bitterness in 
his voice, nor any talk of CapitaHsm (children not 
knowing such long words) or"popinjays"or*'grinding 
toil." He has long since seen these things in a new 
light. But he is faithful in this, that he paints the 
irrevocable in all colours of fairyland. He will speak 
of the ship and the crew — even of me — with fond 
regret. He will lapse into silence as these memories 
overwhelm him. The sharp ridge of his twisted 
nose will gUsten as it droops over his white beard, and 
he will mumble that those were heroic days. 



THE CRUSADERS 67 

It may be that they are. It may be that, while we 
plodding realists go on, for ever preoccupied with our 
daily chores, abstracting a microscopic pleasure from 
each microscopic duty, your true romantic has the 
truer vision, and beholds, afar off, in all its lurid 
splendour and terrible proportions, the piquant ad- 
venture we call Life. 



THE CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 

"It is a mystery to me," I heard the Surgeon re- 
mark in his refined, querulous voice, "how many men 
follow the sea all their lives, go all over the world, 
behold cities and men, and come home with minds 
to all intents and purposes an absolute blank." 

"Apropos of what?" I asked. I had been sitting 
at the other end of the long ward-room table, and 
missed the immediate application of this remark. 
The stewards were setting coffee on the table and 
several men rose to catch the eight-o'clock liberty 
launch. I moved up. 

"Well," said the Surgeon, Hghting a cheroot, "it 
is apropos of nearly every sailor Tve met since I 
joined the Navy, and also of the occasional few that 
came my way in practice ashore as well. But I 
was speaking of Barrett, the second watch keeper. 
Jolly good fellow, as you know, and has knocked 
about a bit. But when I asked him to-day at tea if 
he'd ever been in New Orleans, he said 'yes, often', 
and it was a rotten place. You see, I had been read- 
ing a story which referred to the city. Now Bar- 
rett's comment was typical I admit, but it was 
neither illuminating nor adequate." 

68 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 69 

"It doesn't follow/' I observed, "that his mind 
is a blank, nevertheless. You misunderstand our 
mentality if you imagine you will get much local 
colour out of any of us. I don't suppose, if you 
interviewed a hundred men who had been there or 
any other place, that you would get any other ans- 
wer." 

"I can tell you why," interjected suddenly a 
man seated beside the Surgeon. I recognized him 
as the engineer-commander of a special-service ship 
lying near us at the canal buoys. He was a man 
of middle age, and his neatly trimmed gray beard 
and downward-drooping moustache gave him an air 
of settled maturity and established character. He 
was one of those men, I had already commented 
to myself, who embody a generic type rather than 
an individual character. He might have been 
anything, save for the distinguishing gold lace on 
his sleeve — navigator, paymaster, or a competent 
warrant-instructor of the old school. The Surgeon, 
who was his host on this occasion, looked at him in- 
quiringly. 

"I can tell you why," repeated the engineer- 
commander, taking out a cigarette case. "The 
fact is," he went on after accepting a match, "young 
men, when they go to sea, are romantic, but not 
incurably so. I have rarely found any one," he 
mused, smiHng, "who was incurably romantic! 
One can't be, at sea. It is no sense of grievance 



70 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

which leads me to imagine most of us as having 
had the romance crushed out of us. A young man's 
progress through hfe in our profession, so far from 
resembHng the old-fashioned educational grand tour 
through Europe, is much more like the movement 
of a piece of raw material through a factory. He 
is tortured and tested and twisted, subjected to 
all sorts of racking strains to find out if he will stand 
up under the stresses of life, and finally emerges 
as an article good for one specific purpose and nothing 
else. 

*'A11 our social, professional, and economic forces 
tend to that consummation. We are not 'educated' 
at all, in the sense that other professions, the medical 
for instance, are educated; and the consequence is 
we lack the habits of agreeable self-expression. 
The bright romantic young fellow, just out of school, 
becomes in a few years a taciturn and efficient officer, 
who sends home monosyllabic letters from Cairo 
or Bagdad or Yokohama, and dreams of keeping 
chickens in Buckinghamshire. But don't imagine 
his reticence is proof that he is a fellow of no senti- 
ment. Each of us cherishes some romantic memory 
of foreign parts — a girl, a city, a boarding-house, 
a ship, or even a ship-mate — a memory that tinges 
the fading past with iridescent glamour and of which 
we cannot be persuaded to talk. 

**I have had experiences of that nature in days 
gone by. Like some of you, I was at sea in tramps. 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT yt 

and collected the usual bundle of romantic memories.- 
What I was going to say was, that I knew New 
Orleans. I knew it in what was to me an entirely 
novel way. It was the first foreign place I ever lived 
in ashore. I shall never forget the impressions it 
made on me. 

"I had never been even in the United States. 
There had been a bad slump in freights that year. 
I had just got my chief-engineer's license, and the 
expense of Hving at home had eaten well into my 
savings. When I got to Liverpool again to get a 
job, I found myself along with a good many others. 
I was Hke a hackney carriage. I had a license and 
I had to crawl round and round for somebody to 
hire me. Sounds strange nowadays when they 
are sending piano-tuners and lawyers' clerks and 
school teachers to sea and calhng them sailors. I 
used to call in once a day at a little office where a 
sort of benevolent association had its headquarters. 
Most of us were always falhng behind in our sub- 
scriptions and the secretary would have nothing 
to do with us. He was a big man with a bushy 
black beard, and I never found him doing anything 
else except playing billiards. They had a bilHard- 
table in the back room, and he and two or three old 
chiefs of big Liverpool boats used to monopoHze 
it. It happened by some chance that my subscrip- 
tion had been paid up at this time, so he had to 
give me some attention. One day when I strolled 



72 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

in he waved to me with his cue and I sat down until 
he had finished his stroke. He then said he knew of a 
billet which would be the very thing for me. There 
was a twin-screw passenger boat going out to Boston 
to be taken over. She was going under the Cuban 
flag, he told me. He had had a letter from a friend 
in Belfast who was going Chief of her for the trip. 
I could go Fourth, and they would pay my passage 
Jiome. 

^*Well it didn't sound very attractive, but I 
decided at once. I would go. My journey to Bel- 
fast took up a good deal of money I had left; in fact 
I broke my last five-pound note when I bought my 
ticket. I did not regret that. The fact was, I was 
afflicted with a sudden desire to visit America. 
I had been to all sorts of places like South Africa 
and Austraha and India, but they had not satisfied 
me. I don't say I would have dismissed them all 
as 'rotten' places, but they had made no appeal. 
I had never really seen them, you understand. The 
United States, at that particular juncture in my 
life, did make some sort of subtle appeal to me. I 
had heard of men who had made their fortunes out 
there. I might tumble into something like that. 
I had read — oh, the usual things boys read in Eng- 
land. In the Sunday School at home they had had 
'From Log Cabin to White House.' Mind you, 
it wasn't material success I was thinking about so 
much as the satisfaction of a queer craving I didn't 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 73 

half understand. You see I was brought up as most 
of us were then, in an atmosphere of failure. There 
was always about one man in four out of work. 
The poorhouses were always well stocked with 
sturdy paupers for whom the industrial system had 
no use. We used to go about getting a job as though 
it was a criminal offence. We never dreamed of 
quitting. There were always fifty others waiting 
to snatch it from us. Without knowing just why, 
I had a restless craving to get away from all that. I 
wanted to Hve in some place where one could breathe, 
where the supply of labour was not so tremendously 
in excess of the demand. So I said I would go. I 
went over to Belfast and joined that ship. It was 
November, and we took her out, flying light, into 
winter North Atlantic. 

"It was a terrible business. She was new, and her 
trials, because of the bad weather, had been of the 
sketchiest description. The skipper had secured 
the contract to take her over for a lump sum, he 
to find crew, food, and stores. He had not been 
particularly generous in any of these. There were 
just we four engineers and two mates. We had 
our meals in the passenger saloon, an immense place 
that glittered with mirrors and enamel and gilding, 
but with only one table adrift on an uncarpeted 
floor. It was curious to watch the steward emerge 
from the distant pantry and start on the voyage 
toward us bearing a tureen of soup. As the ship 



74 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

rolled he would slide away to starboard over the 
smooth surface of the teak planking, holding the 
tureen horizontal as though he were carrying out 
some important scientific experiment. Then, just 
before he could bring up against the paneling, she 
would roll to port, and back he would come with 
knees bent and a weather eye for a grip of the nearest 
chair. When she rolled her rails right under, he 
would have to set the thing on the floor and kneel 
down with his arms round it, while we held on to the 
racks and waited. They rigged him a lifeline later 
on, but everything breakable was broken. One 
day there was a terrible crash upstairs, and the skip- 
per and mate jumped from their seats and ran 
away up the grand staircase. The piano had been 
carried away in the music room and had dashed into 
a bookcase, end on. We had to get the crew in to 
lash it fast with ropes. 

"The engine room was full of leaking steam- and 
water-pipes. Every bearing ran hot, and the stern 
glands had been so badly packed that the water 
was squirting through in torrents. And she was 
twin-screw with no oilers carried. I used to spend 
the four solid hours of my watch cruising round, 
hanging on to hand-rails, emptying oil-feeders 
upon her smoking joints. I had field-days every 
day down in the bilges, cleaning shavings and waste 
and workmen's caps out of the suctions. She rolled, 
pitched, bucked, and shivered. She did everything 



. CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 75 

except turn over. Twice the starboard engine broke 
down and we had to turn round and go with the 
weather until we could get it running again. I 
used to call her the ship who lost herself. She was 
all wrong. She had pumps no man could keep right, 
tucked away in corners no human being above the 
size of a Central African pigmy could work in. We 
had no tools and no tackle. And nobody cared. 
The one idea of everybody on board was to ger her 
into Boston, grab our wages and passage money, 
and run away as hard as we could go. I must say 
it was rather demoralizing for a young chap with 
his name to make. Of course the job itself was 
demoralizing. I pitied the chaps who were going 
to serve in her under the Cuban flag. I carried 
away no romantic memories : only a bad scald on my 
chest, where a steam joint had blown out and shot 
boiling water into my open singlet. 

"And Boston made no particular impression 
either. I was paid off, given a railroad ticket to 
New York, and told to apply at a certain office for 
a passage home. We were shoved aboard a train 
which was red-hot one moment and ice-cold a 
moment after. We were all in a bunch at one end 
of the car and scarcely moved the whole time. 
The skipper, who had gone through the day before, 
met us at the Grand Central and took us down town. 
I remember lights, a great noise of traffic, cries to 
get out of the road, and a cross-fire of questions 



76 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

about baggage. It was late afternoon. We roared 
down town in a warm subway. I was struck by 
the ceiling fans in the cars, and the stem preoccupa- 
tion of a woman who sat next to me reading a book. 
When we emerged on Broadway the wind was driving 
the snow horizontally against our faces, and we 
became white exactly as though someone had sprayed 
us with whitewash through a nozzle. 

"We fought our way down into a side street 
and up an elevator into an office. I stood on the 
edge of the little crowd trying to get some sort of 
system into my impressions. I became aware of 
words of disapproval: *No! that won't do!' *No; 
I was promised a passage.' *You know perfectly 
well. Captain,' and *What is it? A skin game?' 
I discovered the Captain and a man in a carefully 
pressed broadcloth suit arguing with the Mate and 
the Chief. I gathered they wanted some of us to 
waive our right to a passage home and sign on some 
other ship. The Chief would have nothing to do 
with it, and the Second and Third expressed their 
refusal in violent language. You couldn't blame 
them, for they were married. They were all married, 
I beheve. I was the only single adventurer among 
them. They looked at me. I must have made some 
inquiry for I heard the words *New Orleans. Hun- 
dred dollars a month. Free ticket.' 

"Well, I had no idea where New Orleans was at 
that time. As far as I can recall I imagined it was 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT jy 

somewhere in South America. That didn't matter. 
I wasn't married and I had no rehsh for going back 
to Liverpool and beginning the same weary old 
chase for a job. I didn't have jobs thrown at me 
in those days. I astonished them all by saying I'd 
go. The Second said I must be crazy. The man 
in the broadcloth suit beckoned me up and asked 
for my papers. They seemed to satisfy him, and 
he telephoned to another office about my ticket. 
A small boy appeared, to take me over there, and I 
followed him out. I never saw any of the others 
again. The small boy led me along Broadway 
and into a big office where I received a ticket for 
New Orleans. Then I had to go back to the station 
and get my baggage. The whole business went on 
in a sort of exciting and foggy dazzle. Nothing 
remains clear in my mind now except that nobody 
regarded me as in the slightest degree of any im- 
portance. Even the small boy, chewing for all he 
was worth, cast me off as soon as he had steered 
me and my baggage to another station, and left 
me to wait for the train. 

"I don't know even now how I managed to make 
the mistake. I dare say such a thing would be im- 
possible nowadays. Anyhow I discovered the next 
morning I was on the wrong train. I believe we 
were bound for Chicago. I was rushing across a 
continent in the wrong direction. I had never done 
much railroad travelling an3rwhere — a few miles into 



78 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

Liverpool, and a night journey from Cardiff to 
Newcastle was about the extent of it. I was be- 
wildered. The conductor told me to go on, now I'd 
started, and take the Chicago route. I suppose 
I must have done that. I sat in a sort of trance, 
hour after hour, watching the train plough through 
immense tracts of territory of which I did not know 
even the names, through great cities that flashed 
and jangled before me, over rivers and through 
mountain passes. I had to get out and scamper 
over to other trains. I went hungry because I didn't 
know there was anything to eat on board. My 
razors were in my baggage and that was gone south 
by some other route. I had nothing with me except 
my papers and a box of cigarettes. I was in a day- 
car and my fellow travellers were constantly chang- 
ing. At last I fell into conversation with a man 
about my own age. He it was who told me I could 
get a berth in the sleeping car if I wanted one. He 
took me out on the observation car at the end. He 
was a reporter, he said. Showed me some wonderful 
references from editors in California for whom he 
had worked. He had a mileage ticket, and was 
going from town to town looking for work. He 
said the Mississippi Valley was Meader'n mud! No 
enterprise.' I have often wondered what he thought 
of me, a tongue-tied and reserved young Britisher 
wandering about the United States. 

"It came to an end at last — some time on the 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 79 

third evening, it must have been. The climate had 
been getting milder and it struck me that we must 
be approaching the equator. I began to wonder 
what was in store for me. I felt as though I had 
passed through a sort of tumultuous and bewildering 
purgatory. I found myself in an atmosphere so 
alien that I had no notion of where or how to catch 
on. I wandered about a great barn of a station 
trying to find somebody to attend to me. English 
fashion, I wanted to find my baggage. Nobody 
knew anything. Nobody cared. A big negro on 
the box of a cab flourished his whip. In desperation 
I got in, just in front of someone else. 'Whar you 
goin', sah?' he exclaimed dramatically. *Take 
me to a hotel T I replied. He made his whip crack 
like a pistol-shot, and we rattled off into the darkness. 
"Of course I felt better next day. I had an ad- 
dress which the man in New York had given me. I 
remember the name — Carondelet Street. I re- 
member it because it was the first intimation of the 
enchantment which New Orleans has always exer- 
cised over me. There was a fantastic touch about 
it which to me was dehghtful. I remember the 
magic of that first walk through the city across 
Royal Street, up Bourbon, across Canal and so into 
Carondelet. There was something bizarre even about 
the office I visited, too. I believe it had been origin- 
ally built as the headquarters of some lottery, and it 
was full of elaborate carving and marble sconces and 



8o HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

glittering mirrors and candelabra. They wanted 
to know where I had got to. They had expected 
me the day before. One would have imagined from 
their impatience that I had kept a ship waiting, or 
something equally terrible. Now that I had come, 
they discovered they might not want me after all. 
I waited for something definite. After some tele- 
phoning, a man with a square sheet of pasteboard 
tied over his forehead, to act as an eye-shade, told 
me to go down to Louisa Street and see the chief of a 
ship refitting down there. 

*'I got on a trolley car and rumbled down inter- 
minable streets of wooden shacks, coming out abruptly 
in front of a high bank over which I could see the 
funnel and masts of a steamer. The Chief was a 
benevolent old German who had spent twenty years 
in the States. He patted me on the back and made 
me sit down on his settee while he filled a great 
meerschaum pipe. He had had a great deal of 
trouble, he told me. I wasn't surprised when I 
learned the facts. He had had a Swedish First 
Assistant, a very fine man he affirmed, very fine 
man indeed: good machinist and engineer, but he 
could not manage the Chinks. It was a pretty 
cosmopolitan crowd on that ship, I may tell you. 
They had Chinese firemen, Norwegian sailors, and 
officers of all nations. The Swedish First Assistant 
was now replaced by a Dutchman. I inquired 
what had become of the Swede, and the old gentle- 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 8i 

man informed me that the Chinks had done for him. 
He had gone ashore one night and had not come 
back. A day or two later, his body had been found 
in the river. *But dey haf not found his head/ the 
old chap told me, looking extremely gloomy. 

"It was a startling beginning. I had been ship- 
mates with men who had lost their heads, but not 
with that disastrous finality. It appeared that I 
was to go Second Assistant if I shaped well. Mr. 
Blum was very anxious for me to shape well. *You 
haf been with Chinks?' he asked. I had. More 
than that, I was able to say I hked them. ^That's 
right,' he assented heartily; *if you like them, they 
are all O. K.' And then, in answer to a query of 
mine, he gave me an address in Lafayette Square, 
where I could get lodgings. *They will do you well 
there,' he assured me. 

"I went away to explore. I felt I was having 
adventures. This was better than walking about 
Liverpool in the rain trying to get a job. Here I 
was succeeding to a billet which had become vacant 
owing to a tyrannical Swede getting himself decapi- 
tated in a highly mysterious fashion. Mind you, 
there were other hypotheses which would account 
for the Swede's tragic demise. I came to the conclu- 
sion later that he probably fell off a ferry boat re- 
turning from Algiers on the other side of the river 
and got caught in the paddles. But at the time 
the Chink theory was popular. I didn't care. 



82 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 



^ 



One doesn't, you know, when one is young and with- 
out ties. 

"And I explored. That old steamer which I 
had been sent to join was as queer as her crew. She 
had been built in Scotland twenty years before and 
had sailed under half a dozen flags. She had been 
bought by her present owners to keep her out of the 
hands of competitors, and she only ran when one 
of the others was laid up for overhaul. She was 
always breaking down herself. Sometimes I was 
weeks in New Orleans with her. Old Blum would 
wave his meerschaum and wag his head sagely. 
'Say nutting,' he would remark, when any comment 
was thrown out about our indolent behaviour. 

"He had a great friend who would come down 
to see him, a Russian named Isaac. I suppose he 
had another name but I never knew it. He was a 
ridiculously diminutive creature with a stubby 
moustache and round, coloured spectacles. He had 
escaped from Siberia, they told me, and after many 
wanderings had settled in New Orleans. He had 
a brother who was still in prison at Omsk, and he 
had some means of sending things to him. Some 
day he was going to get him away. But the curious 
thing about Isaac was his reputation for probity. 
When we were paid at the end of the month, we 
would hand our rolls to him and tell him to put them 
in the bank. He had a greasy note book in which 
he put down the totals among a lot of orders for 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 83 

soap and matches and overalls. He dealt in every- 
thing. You could buy diamond rings and shoelaces, 
shirts and watches, from him. Where he kept his 
stock, if he had any, was a mystery. He flitted 
about, smiling and rubbing his hands, presenting 
a perfect picture of rascally evasion. And every- 
body trusted him. I never heard, but I have 
not the slightest doubt he eventually rescued his 
brother from Siberia. He had friends in San Fran- 
cisco, Nagasaki, and Vladivostok. A queer char- 
acter. 

"I used to go off on tours through the old quarters 
of the city by myself. I saw some astonishing 
things. There was an old gentleman at our board- 
ing house, for instance, who excited my curiosity. 
I used to follow him up St. Charles Street after 
dinner. He always came to a halt at Canal Street 
before crossing, and would swing round sharply 
as though he suspected someone spying upon him. 
He never took any notice of me, however. Then 
he would skip across and down Royal Street, turning 
into the CosmopoHtan. I used to go there myself, 
for a good many EngHshmen patronized it. It 
was known among us as the Monkey wrench for 
some reason. This old chap would sit in a corner 
with a tall glass of Pilsner before him and read 
UAheille, that funny little French paper that used 
to say hard things about Lincoln during the Civil 
War. His gray hair was brushed straight up oflF his 



84 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

forehead, and he had a trim gray moustache and a 
Napoleon tuft on his chin. About ten o'clock I 
would see him coming out and marching down 
Royal Street. 

"One night I followed him, and saw him go into 
one of the old curio shops that abound down there. 
Well, one evening I had been wandering about near 
the Cathedral and was coming up Royal Street 
toward the Cosmopolitan. It was in darkness, for 
the shops down there were shut, but there was a bril- 
liant glare of light in front of the restaurant. It 
was like watching a brightly lit stage from the dark- 
ness of the auditorium. People were passing in 
crowds, and a trolley car was making a great noise 
grinding its way down the street. I saw the old 
gentleman come out and pause, setting his big soft 
hat firmly on his head. And then, to my astonish- 
ment, a young man stepped swiftly out of the swing 
doors and struck the old gentleman with a dagger 
on the shoulder. He fell at once and the young man 
began to walk away. The old gentleman rose on 
his elbow, drew out a revolver and fired, twice. It 
was like a rehearsal of a melodrama. The young 
man fell against a passer-by. And then the in- 
evitable crowd flew up from all sides and the narrow 
street was blocked with people. 

"I kept on the outside. I had no desire to be 
drawn into the affair, whatever it was. A reporter 
in the next room to mine told me it was a feud. 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 85 

and considered it the most ordinary thing in the 
world. The newspapers treated it in the same way. 
It was this matter-of-fact acceptance of what were 
to me astounding adventures that induced that 
curious impression of being in an enchanted city. 
I would be strolling along taking my evening walk 
in the dusk when I would catch sight of feminine 
forms on a balcony, with mantillas and fans, and I 
would hear the hght tinkle of a guitar. Passers-by 
had a disconcerting habit of flitting into long dim 
corridors. I saw aged and dried-up people behind 
the counters of stores which never seemed to have 
any customers. 

"I passed curio shops which appeared to be the 
abodes of ghosts. I shall never forget my adventure 
in the shop into which the old gentleman had been 
accustomed to vanish. I needed a shelf of some 
sort for my room, and I had a sudden notion of 
investigating this place. The window was full of 
the bric-a-brac which silts slowly down to the city 
from the old plantations; silver ware, crucifixes, 
bibelots, and candlesticks. It was away down past 
the Cathedral and the fireflies were flitting among 
the trees. I opened the door. A candle on a 
sconce was the sole illumination of the little shop, 
which was full of grandfather clocks. There must 
have been a dozen of them there, tall, white-faced 
spectres, and all going. I stood in astonishment. 
It was as if I had intruded upon a private meeting 



86 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 



1 



of the fathers of Time. I had an impression 
that one of them, turned sHghtly toward his neigh- 
bour, was about to make a weighty remark. He 
cleared his throat with a hoarse rasp and struck 
seven! And all the others, with the most musical 
lack of harmony, joined in and struck seven as 
well. 

"I was so preoccupied with this preposterous 
congregation that I had failed to notice the entrance 
of a tall thin person who was regarding me with 
austere disapproval. I wondered if she was go- 
ing to strike seven. But she didn't. She wished 
to know what I wanted, and when I told her, she 
said she hadn't got it, and disappeared among the 
tall clocks. I went out into the summer evening 
wondering what tales those venerable timepieces 
were whispering among themselves — tales of this 
strange old city of enchantment, along whose streets 
flitted the ghosts of a dead past, fleeing before the 
roar of the trolley car and the foot of the questing 
stranger. 

"For that is the dominating impression of one 
who dwells for a time in the city — an impression 
of intruding among mysteries of which one has no 
right to the key. You read Cable and become aware 
of other ghosts with which he has peopled the fantas- 
tic vistas of the French Quarter and the reaches of 
that enigmatic waterway up which sail the great 
ships with their cargoes of coff'ee and tropic fruit. 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 87 

You begin to wonder whether you are the only real 
live human being doing business in that part of the 
world. 

"I found a few, of course, as time went on. It so 
happened I came across one, a Scotchman too, who 
gave me that phrase — a city of enchantment. He 
kept a second-hand book-store along a little stone- 
flagged alley off St. Charles Street, an alley where 
there couldn't possibly be any business. I suppose 
he had some sort of mail-order trade with distant 
libraries, but he always seemed to part with a volume 
with intense reluctance. I had a lot of time on my 
hands, and was fond of reading; and he struck a 
bargain with me to bring the books back and he would 
make no charge for them. Some of his books he 
wouldn't sell at all. I got into the habit of dropping 
in during the evening for a talk. It became quite a 
club. There was an elderly Yankee from Connecti- 
cut, a lawyer who had been moving gently about the 
Union for years and had come to a gentle anchorage in 
the Crescent City. His ostensible occupations were 
chewing tobacco and commenting upon the fluctuat- 
ing chalk-marks on the board at the Cotton Ex- 
change. There was a fat Irishman who spent a 
good deal of time writing and printing ferocious 
pamphlets dealing with Home Rule and Holy Ire- 
land. There was I, a lonely young Englishman, be- 
calmed in a foreign port. And there was a sharp- 
nosed little man who enveloped himself in mystery 



88 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

and took a malicious pleasure in evading identifi- 
cation. 

**It was one evening when the twilight — which was 
half an hour earlier in that narrow flagged passage 
than in the open street — was falling, and filhng the 
old shop with strange shadows, that I heard our 
host's voice saying: *Yes, this is a city of enchant- 
ment. It catches the imagination. As we drift 
about the world we grow weary of the futility of 
human life, but we are urged on to fresh voyages 
and travels. Always we see a better prospect 
ahead. We are deceived, it is not so. We sigh for 
our native villages and dream of golden futures. So 
it goes on, until by chance we come to this strange 
city of enchantment, built upon the drowsy marshes 
of a great river, and — we stop ! We go no farther. 
We become incurious about the future and we look 
back upon the past without regret. Is it not so.? 
We are all like that. A city of enchanted transients. 
Lotus-eaters of the Mississippi. Hobos of elevated 
sentiments who lack the elementary effort to move 
on!" 

"Of course, he was joking, but there was a certain 
acrid sediment of truth in the stream of his elo- 
quence. It gave me a key to the mystery which 
seemed to brood over the city during the long 
months of humid heat. It directed my attention to 
the bizarre contrast between this sombre melancholy 
and the sharp crackling modern business-Hfe that 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 89 

roared up Canal Street and burst into a thunderous 
clangour in the vast warehouses on the levee, where 
the cotton and sugar and coffee and fruit came and 
went, and the river spread its ooze among the piles 
below. And it evoked a potent curiosity in the man 
himself and the folks who had come to a stop, as he 
put it, around him. 

"The sharp-nosed Httle man remarked to me as 

we went away one evening, that our friend B was 

*well posted'. That was the unsophisticated verdict 
of one who, as I say, took a malicious pleasure in 
shrouding himself in mystery. He compensated us 
for this by exhibiting a startling familiarity with the 
private lives of everybody else we had ever heard of, 
from the President of the Republic to the old Chief of 
my ship. It was his pleasure to appear suddenly 
before us as we sat in the back of that old bookstore. 
He would disappear in the same enigmatic fashion. 
He would recount to us dark and fascinating stories 
of the people who passed the window as we sat within. 
He would wait by the door until some stranger had 
gone, and then with a muttered excuse, slink out and 
be seen no more. 

"He told us what he called the facts of the feud of 
which I had seen the dramatic denouement in Royal 
Street. The young chap was a Hungarian, son 
of a count who had sent him a remittance on receipt 
of a letter every month from the old gentleman, a 
Creole connection. The letter was to certify that 



90 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

the son was in America. For some reason the old 
gentleman, who owned enormous property but 
had no money, had declined to sign the certificate. 
The young man had calmly forged it. There had 
been a quarrel. So our mysterious sharp-nosed 
little friend told us. He knew why the house in 
Melisande Street had been closed, and conveyed the 
information in a thrilUng whisper behind a curved 
palm. He hinted at desperate doings going on 
almost at our elbows in the dark corners of the old 
city; Chinamen tracked to their death by minions 
of secret societies in Mongolia, Italian peanut 
vendors who were in the pay of Neapolitan high- 
binders. Englishmen shadowed by Mexican assas- 
sins. We would sit in the heavy dusk in our shirt- 
sleeves, the occasional glare of a match illuminating 
our listening faces, while he revealed to us the secrets 
by which we were surrounded. 

"Did we believe him? I did. I was young, and. 
it was as though he fulfilled for me the veiled promise 
of the old city to tell me its story and envelop me 
in the glamour of its enchantment. I would like 
to believe him still, but I cannot. He is too im- 
probable for me now. Sometimes I wonder whether 
he ever existed, whether he did not evolve out of 
the heavy exhalations of that swampy delta where 
so many mysteries lie buried in the dark mud below 
the tall grasses, a sort of sharp-nosed transient Puck, 
intriguing our souls with tales out t)f a dime novel. 



CITY OF ENCHANTMENT 91 

and tickling our imaginations with a bogus artistry. 
I would like to believe him still; but as the years 
pass I have an uneasy suspicion that he too had 
fallen a victim to the spirit of the place, and was 
evoking, for our delectation, his own pinchbeck 
conception of a city of enchantment." 



A NEW AND ENTERTAINING METHOD OF 
REVIEWING BOOKS HIGHLY RECOM- 
MENDED TO THE PROFESSION 

Of course, the point of the joke is that the reviewer, 
in the present case, is not a reviewer at all, but, as 
described in a former article, a Lieutenant of Reserve. 
The regular blown-in-t he-glass reviewers must not 
imagine that he is trying to do them out of a job. 
On the contrary, the most probable upshot will be 
that the regular, blown-in-the-glass style of re- 
viewing books will be seen to hold the field if we 
are to get anywhere. For it is presumed that these 
gentlemen really are trying to get somewhere with 
their criticism, that they are shooting to kill, and not 
merely announcing new books. . . . 

In the first place, I ought to confess that I 
envy the professional reviewer. I figure him, 
seated in the monastic calm of a richly appointed 
library, the walls gleaming with the russet and 
blue and gold of leather bindings — gifts from 
wealthy authors in token of their gratitude; a bust 
of Plato behind the door on the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica case; a broad heavy table covered with 
the reviews of two continents, and a pile of new books 

92 



REVIEWING BOOKS 93 

— for review. I figure him seated in his great chair, 
a man of noble forehead and deep discriminating 
eyes. His dress is rich yet dishevelled, and he toys 
with a gold-tipped cigarette as he prepares his 
thoughts for transcription to the big pad of fine 
paper before him. He is rich and respectable. The 
silence of the great room is interrupted for a mo- 
ment as his daughter, a being of matchless beauty, 
trips into the sanctum and, seated on the arm of 
his chair, covers his fine iron-gray head with her own 
tumbled golden tresses. He signs the check, of 
course, as I figure him, his left arm encircUng the 
slender waist. Another moment, and she is gone. 
He smiles. This reviewer has a charming smile. 
He reaches for his note-pad and writes, still smiling. 
I look over his shoulder (in imagination). There 
is a golden hair on his coat. He has written: "True 
happiness consists in avoiding those who are getting 
more out of life than we are." He thinks he has 
thought of something new, and smiles again, deciding 
to bring it into the article he is about to write. 

Now it is no abuse of language to say that, in 
the above picture of a reviewer, I am not describing 
myself. The present writer is neither rich nor 
respectable. His dress is the uncomfortable white 
uniform of a naval ofl&cer in the tropics, a uniform 
designed by a non-smoker, a non-reader, a non- 
writer, and a nonentity generally, I should say. 
Even the "big pad of fine white paper" is out of the 



94 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

picture in this case, for such a thing has not been 
seen on the ship for months. Indeed, it is quite 
on the cards that this article will be finished on a 
naval signal pad, which will certainly confirm it as a 
novel way of reviewing books. 

Nor is the "richly appointed library" to be found 
in our vicinity. In passing, it is humiliating to re- 
flect how very few hours I have ever spent in richly 
appointed libraries. Some ships have Hbraries, it 
is true, securely locked up, so that you have to 
wait meekly upon some pug-nosed autocrat of a 
steward who stands just behind you, breathing down 
your neck, while you endeavour to find a congenial 
volume among the roach-ravened stacks of bygone 
best sellers. But our ship has no library save a 
mahogany cabinet in the chart room containing 
some mysterious volumes bound in sheet-lead, so 
that when flung overboard to prevent their falHng 
into the hands of the enemy, they will sink. Our 
ship has very little of anything, after the manner of 
ships in which the fittings, from the wireless to 
the engines, are of destroyer pattern. There is a 
legend that when anybody gets up in our ward-room, 
everybody else has to rise to let him move round. 
The letter-copying press is on the ice chest, and 
the rifle rack is bolted against the chronometer 
case. So there is no Hbrary. Therefore, when I 
was bitten with the notion that I wanted to write a 
book review, I decided to do it ashore. 



REVIEWING BOOKS 95 

To explain how a Lieutenant of Reserve, in Levan- 
tine waters, becomes possessed of anything to re- 
view, it should be said that the editor of a maga- 
zine, with the sagacity pertaining to editors, had 
sent over a bale of new pubhcations, deeming it 
possible that said Lieutenant might go mad for 
lack of mental stimulus, and so bring shame to 
the ancient and honourable company of men of 
letters. A Maltese steward, suborned for the purpose, 
dumps these volumes into a canvas bag and goes 
ashore with them — leaving them in the care of my 
good friend M. Eskenazi, licensed money-changer, 
who has a microscopic Bureau de Change under 
the high arcades of the Passage Kraemer, which 
runs beneath the Hotel Splendide Palace, and de- 
bouches upon the Rue Parallel. It is to this same 
lofty and multitudinous Passage Kraemer — ^when 
the westering sun, just before he sinks down and sil- 
houettes CordeHo on the other side of the Gulf, 
black against red-gold, sends his level, blinding rays 
from end to end of the arcades — that I repair with 
pipe and note-book, and sit down at a particular 
table in a nook opposite the microscopic office of 
M. Eskenazi. He regards me through his pigeon- 
hole, and we exchange salutations as I call the waiter 
from the cafe behind me by clapping my hands. 

M. Eskenazi is much occupied. While I am 
consuming a lemon-and-mint ice cream, he sells 
some opium to the chief officer of a Japanese vessel; 



96 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

an ounce of hashish to a venerable old Russian 
with quavery knees and an incredibly fine panama 
hat; and two postal-cards to a petty officer of an 
Itahan battleship. He changes two one-pound 
notes into Turkish paper for a naval officer from our 
flag-ship; advises a shady-looking personage, who 
seems to be a Scandinavian, upon some recondite 
subject; shoos away sixteen small boys and girls 
who are begging round his window; and buys, for 
spot cash, a magnificent pair of German prismatic 
field-glasses from an individual who has evidently 
not washed for weeks, and who probably stole them 
from the dead body of some Turkish officer lying 
under a cloud of vultures in the gorges of the moun- 
tains behind the city. And all the while the people 
of Smyrna pass to and fro in throngs; rich and poor, 
high and low. Gentile, Jew, and Greek, Ottoman, 
Armenian, Balkan, and Muscovite, Latin, Levantine 
and Teuton, young and old, virtuous and so forth — 
a motley swarm. Here then is the correct milieu, 
to my mind, for the reviewing of books — a seat 
at a cafe in the very heart of the city, a front stall 
in the great theatre of life. 

M. Eskenazi, seizing the opportunity afforded 
by a lull in his multifarious dealings, comes over 
smiling, the canvas bag in his hand, to drink his 
mastic and discuss the news. The Turkish pound 
is down again, he remarks pensively, by which he 
means that said Turkish pound, worth four dollars 



REVIEWING BOOKS 97 

In 1914 and a dollar-twenty-five yesterday, has 
dropped to a dollar fifteen. Silently I hand him a 
few English notes, and he goes over and extracts 
the current exchange from a small but formidable 
safe buried under a heap of Persian mats. I am 
his friend, he says, so he gives me the benefit of his 
knowledge. Money-changers, and Jewish money- 
changers in particular, seem to have a bad name 
in history. I recall an incident in the temple at 
Jerusalem. . . . Personally I prefer them to 
Pharisees. M. Eskenazi is a Jewish money-changer. 
His ancestors fled from Toledo in Torquemada's 
day and settled here in Smyrna, where the benighted 
Ottomans suffered them to dwell and prosper. 
He speaks Spanish in his home; English to me; 
French, Greek, Turkish, and Armenian in his busi- 
ness. He resembles a composite portrait of Lord 
Kitchener and the Earl of Derby, and is a most 
entertaining companion. 

M. Eskenazi enters with zest into my plan for 
reviewing books out in the open, as it were, for he 
imagines that thereby I am earning immense sums 
of money. He understands money. He knows 
a great many ways of making money. This writing 
business intrigues him. It is, to him, a novel idea. 
They actually pay you for it, he murmurs. An 
extraordinary country, America! What gets him 
is that, in America, an editor can pay money. Now 
here, an editor is on the same social and financial 



98 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

plane as a shoe-shine boy or an itinerant peanut 
vendor. He is for ever behind with his rent. He 
spends much of his time in jail, for attacking the 
Government, or the powers, or because he cannot 
pay his debts. He is a shadowy creature, having 
no continuous abode. His journals have their day, 
and cease to be. A small hand-printing press, 
a bale of dirty white paper, and a tin trunk full of 
miscellaneous Hellenic, Ottoman, and Latin type, 
all piled on a donkey cart — and he is away to a 
distant quarter of the city to start life afresh. He 
resembles a Bolshevik who has got out of touch with 
the treasury department. In summer he wears 
an unfortunate suit of near-linen and a battered 
straw hat; in winter a mangy rabbit-fur-lined coat 
and a derby. When I tell M. Eskenazi that some 
editors in America earn as much as a dollar a day 
and are received in society, he is astounded. Evi- 
dently a country of illimitable resources. He 
finishes his mastic, lights a cigarette, and hurries 
over to attend to two customers, while I open the 
canvas bag and examine, one by one, the books 
I am about to review. 

It seems almost to savour of magic, after our dis- 
cussion of money, to draw out first (and quite un- 
wittingly) "Midas and Son" by Stephen McKenna. 
The easy, sumptuous and, rapid modern style of 
Mr. McKenna depends for its success upon a strong, 
non-literary central idea. I mean, no one would 



REVIEWING BOOKS 99 

read this sort of book for its style alone. As far 
as I can make out there is no such central idea in 
** Midas and Son" as there undoubtedly was in 
''Sonia." *'Sonia" was a remarkable book in many 
ways; not the least remarkable being the cool 
revelation of graft as practised among the patrician 
English. It was a picture, not only of two contrasted 
Englands, but of two violently antagonistic social 
forces at work in a disintegrating community. Such 
a book is bound to be interesting. But a book which 
has for its theme simply immense wealth cannot be 
interesting. Money in itself is the most unin- 
teresting subject on earth. M. Eskenazi is of this 
opinion. I have gathered from him that granted 
even if money does talk, which he doubts, its con- 
versation is not entertaining out of office hours. 
Money, he holds, is an admirable servant and an 
abominable master. And one does not take an 
absorbing interest in servants. 

Apart from this, as I watch the cosmopolitan 
throng surge to and fro through the Passage Kraemer, 
as I note our esteemed admiral shaking hands with 
an equally esteemed Italian general at the entrance 
of the Hotel Splendide Palace, it occurs to me that 
this latest book of Mr. McKenna's is a good example 
of the sort of fiction we got used to during the war. 
Perhaps the last of its race. It is nervous in ac- 
compHshment. One gets "rattled,'' at times, read- 
ing it. It is obviously the work of a member of 



loo HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

the cultured governing classes. Intensely dramatic 
moments are hurried over — not because they are 
inartistic, but because the behaviour of the char- 
acters has become repugnant to the good form of 
the cultured governing classes. And it carries 
on what seems to have become almost a craze with 
some novelists — the habit of introducing characters 
from previous novels. M. Eskenazi cannot assist 
me much here, but I am incHned to believe his 
ethics would not admit this sort of thing in trade. 
One would think, too, when a novel is finished, that 
an author would be only too glad to turn his char- 
acters out of doors to shift for themselves. If I 
had been consulted about the League of Nations, 
I should certainly have stood out for a clause abolish- 
ing trilogies. . . . But of course this is no way 
of reviewing books. 

M. Eskenazi, I observe, is accommodating two 
lengthy bluejackets in American uniform, as I 
draw out another volume, which proves to be Cecil 
Chesterton's ''History of the United States." M. 
Eskenazi has a high opinion of the United States 
Navy. An American battleship in the harbour, 
with fourteen hundred men on board, has been 
of considerable profit to him as a vendor of Turkish 
carpets, Persian rugs, and so forth. He says the 
American naval man has two shining qualities — 
he has money to spend, and he spends it. They 
certainly satisfy the eye, these husky gentlemen, 



REVIEWING BOOKS loi 

in their spotless rig and with their extremely brown 
faces and candid eyes. I feel very glad that an 
Englishman has at length been found who consid- 
ered the history of the United States worth writing 
about. If some modern Diogenes, instead of wander- 
ing round looking for such a common object as 
an honest man, had tried to find an Englishman 
who had read the history of the United States, he 
would have had to give up in despair. 

There is an additional reason for gratitude. 
Ever since G. K. Chesterton wrote "A Short History 
of England," I have been terrified lest he should 
deal the United States the same devastating blow. 
I have a theory that Cecil, who had been to America, 
pleaded with his more famous brother to spare a 
young and confiding nation, to give them a chance, 
and that G. K. C, with magnificient generosity, 
consented ! 

For if he had written this book it would have been 
all wrong. Without yielding to anybody on earth 
in my admiration for G. K. Chesterton — (did I not 
discover him in the Saturday Daily News nearly 
twenty years ago?) — I am quite sure there is nobody 
on earth less fitted to understand or write about the 
United States. Cecil Chesterton, on the other hand, 
was just the man. The book is advertised in 
England as "the ideal short history for the general 
reader." It is just that. American readers must 
remember that the "general reader" in England 



I02 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

has never heard of the Ku Klux Klan or Mason and 
Dixon's Line. His ideas of a Chautauqua are as 
vague as his conception of a barbecue or a picayune. 
The- terms "native son," " Creole," "carpet- 
bagger," "hoosier" and so on, mean nothing to him. 
The famous "James boys" and the equally famous 
brothers William and Henry James, are all one to 
him. Daniel Webster, he believes, wrote a diction- 
ary. Well, if he didn't, what about it? Neverthe- 
less, this same "general reader" in England, whom 
I ask Americans to pity as they would pity a denizen 
of Central China or the Congo, has some sparks 
of good in him. He is not altogether unregenerate. 
He hasn't had a chance, so far. Henry the Eighth's 
wives and the Boston Tea Party have been too much 
for him. Even now he has an uneasy notion that 
he is not well informed about this nation across the 
sea which, in such an incredibly brief period, trained 
and equipped and flung nineteen hundred thousand 
men into France to aid us, in the hour of our terrible 
need, to hold and throttle and beat the ugly life 
out of the barbarian hordes. He has heard some- 
where that these men are of his own race. And 
now here is a book, written by a private in the British 
army in a splendidly clear and forcible style, a style 
such as G. K. Chesterton might write if he were 
only content to let words speak, instead of making 
them do ground and lofty tumbling, as well. The 
outlook for the general reader is bright. I look 



REVIEWING BOOKS 103 

forward to referring casually, in English company, to 
Aaron Burr, or the Battle of New Orleans, without 
being confronted by that icy stare of non-comprehen- 
sion which is one of the marvels of our island story. 
Apropos of this, the very next book I fish out of my 
canvas bag is Robert Cortes Holhday's "Walking- 
Stick Papers/' Here, as Squeers remarked, is 
richness. It used to be a brag of mine, in the days 
when I was a drummer in Merrie England, that I 
could not only design and build an engine, but I 
could sell it afterward. Mr. Holhday has sold 
books as well as written them. I like this sort of 
thing. The great trouble with so many of our liter- 
ary men is that they can't do anything else. And 
it is one of the peculiarities of the artist and the 
saint that their equipment comes by other roads. 
George Moore, who is of course an artist and not a 
saint, seems to reckon his career in Paris as a painter 
a sad failure. It seems to me, after an attentive 
and admiring study of his works, that he owes as 
much to his training as a painter as to his early 
experiences as a stable boy in his father's stud. 
But apart from the piquant flavour lent to the 
** Walking-Stick Papers" by the author's experi- 
ences as a bookseller, the essays appeal to me because 
it is just this kind of writing which our younger 
men in England cannot do. There is a nimbleness 
of mind — a freedom from silly, mawkish, conven- 
tional forms — which does not seem to flourish in our 



I04 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

humid and chilly air. An Englishman never takes 
his collar off when he is writing. How can you 
expect him to show you his soul? 

Another example of the same American genius 
for this literary gambolling comes out of the bag — 
Christopher Morley's "Rocking Horse." Comes 
out prancing and curveting, and neighing and shying 
— obviously at the bizarre surroundings of the Pas- 
sage Kraemer, with its startling costumes and bril- 
liant colours. Shies at more than this, for the rock- 
ing horse, be it understood, is a domestic animal. 
Only respectable married folk keep rocking horses. 
One recalls Hugh Walpole's laconic comment when 
Mr. Holliday said he was married. "All Americans 
are," murmured Mr. Walpole. And so it seems. 
Late last night at Costi's Restaurant in the Rue de 
Make, a party of young American naval officers 
one and all confessed that they were married. 
Which is most edifying, but has nothing to do with a 
review of books. What is left in the canvas bag.^^ 

John Keats has recorded his feehngs in a famous 
sonnet when he discovered Chapman's "Homer," 
comparing his joy to that of some lonely watcher 
of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken. 
At the risk of making an astronomical blunder, I 
prefer to call Ellen La Motte a star rather than a 
planet. It may not be so scientific but it is more 
polite and more true. 

"CiviHzation," a collection of short stories dealing 



REVIEWING BOOKS 105 

with the European in China, is one of those books 
which sHp into circulation without a vast deal of 
clatter, and estabhsh themselves firmly in the 
inner affections of a number of people who know 
good work from bad. They do not become best 
sellers, as far as I am aware, and quite possibly 
the warm-hearted people who support best sellers 
may want to know just what there is in a book like 
"Civilization" to rouse such emotions among the 
cognoscenti. Alas! cognoscenti are always being 
pestered to give their reasons. Many cognoscenti 
have grown weary of explaining and remain in 
hiding, quietly enjoying the fruits of their enter- 
prise. Of course, no such behaviour is possible to a 
reviewer. He must tell why he likes a book or 
cease to be a reviewer. Well, the secret is a technical 
one, and it is called "atmosphere." How this at- 
mosphere is produced, I don't quite know. If I did, 
I should produce it myself and so acquire an endur- 
ing fame. I admit this is not the correct sort of 
thing to say in a review. In England, at any rate, 
a reviewer invariably leaves on the mind of the 
reader a notion that he (the reviewer) could have 
written the book himself and written it better, with a 
further comforting assurance that he (the reader) 
could, with a little practise, do it too. In this way 
the reviewer is glorified, the reader is gratified, 
and the author, poor wight, is frequently tempted 
to commit suicide. 



io6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

While I am reaching to the bottom of the canvas 
bag for the remaining volume, a young person 
appears among the hundreds of young persons 
passing to and fro, who is singularly apropos. She 
advances, and forestalling my intention, drags a 
chair up to my table and sits down. I say she is 
singularly apropos, because the remaining book is 
Conrad's "Arrow of Gold." M. Eskenazi joins 
us during a lull in his affairs. I order ices, mastic, 
and coffee. We converse, while I turn once again 
the pages of Mr. Conrad's extraordinary romance. 
The newcomer does not speak English. Lest you 
should form an erroneous estimate of her qualifica- 
tions as a heroine, let me add that in addition to 
her native tongue she speaks French, German, 
Italian, Russian, Greek, Turkish, and Spanish. 
She regards the pile of books on the table without 
any discernible emotion. Books to her are nothing. 
She likes illustrated journals of fashions, especially 
les modeles americains. Politics, as we know them, 
are nothing to her. Her orientation differs from 
ours. She loves the English, the Americans, and 
the Germans, and she hates the Greeks, the French, 
and the Armenians. She has never been farther 
north than Sophia, farther west than Athens, or 
farther east than Constantinople. Books to her 
are nothing. Yet her viewpoint is of value, since 
men to her are everything and out of men books 
are made. And being polite, she is good enough 



REVIEWING BOOKS 107 

to inquire what is the book which I have in my hand. 
It is "The Arrow of Gold." And what is it about? 

This places me in a quandary because, although 
I have read the book with attention, I am not at all 
clear what it is about. It is a dreadful confession 
for a confirmed and lifelong Conradian to make, 
but I have no clear notion of anything happening 
in the story. It is dreadful because, if there is one 
artist alive to-day who can actually, as Meredith 
Nicholson says, push a character through the door 
and let him speak for himself, it is Conrad. Many 
of his characters are going about to-day, for it is 
rational to assume that if an author's creations 
really are creations, one may easily meet them. 
I met several of them at a hotel in Malta. There 
was Kurtz, from "Heart of Darkness," not dead 
at all, in the full-dress uniform of a Russian imperial 
guardsman. There was Schomberg, disguised as 
a Swiss automobile salesman. There was Captain 
MacWhirr, from "Typhoon," in the uniform of the 
Royal Naval Reserve, breathing heavily at a table 
by himself, and remarking, when interrogated, that 
he had no remembrance of ever going through a 
typhoon. "We used to have dirty weather at 
times, of course," he murmured. 

But most of the characters in "The Arrow of 
Gold" are too thin ever to materialize like that. 
As opposed to Miss La Motte's "Civilization" with 
its indubitable atmosphere and mastery of illusion, 



io8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

"The Arrow of Gold" seems to have been written 
designedly without atmosphere. The characters 
remain suspended in a kind of passionless ether. 
And this leads me to enunciate a daring theory — 
that Mr. Conrad, in this book, has endeavoured 
to evoke some transient memories of a too-long- 
vanished past. There is always this danger beset- 
ting the artist, because some people and scenes 
seem to have the faculty of imposing themselves 
upon his imagination without bringing with them 
any adequate capacity for transmutation into 
terms of art. They are, if one may venture a 
phrase, brilliant and sterile phantoms. They are as 
vivid as a flash of lightning in the memory, yet one 
can do nothing with them. Such a figure is Dona 
Rita, in "The Arrow of Gold." Such a place is the 
Street of the Consuls in Marseilles. One can see Mr. 
Conrad trying to galvanize her into some sort of 
life corresponding to the life of humanity, but she 
won't move. She does nothing comprehensible 
from beginning to end. She is a phantom. One 
never believes in Monsieur George's love for her at 
all. One struggles to visualize the original of 
this charming and exasperating being, seen in the 
dazzHng sunlight of Marseilles — no sooner seen than 
gone. 

So, too, with the Street of the Consuls. It re- 
minds me of the Rue d'Aventure in Marseilles, which 
I beheld in the small hours, one night last winter. 



REVIEWING BOOKS 109 

A high, narrow, hermetically sealed sort of street, 
with flag-poles sticking out of upper windows, and 
immense black doors that seemed closed for all 
eternity. It was bright moonlight and the line 
of shadow lay exactly down the middle of the road- 
way. I had an appointment with a torpedo lieuten- 
ant who spoke no French, and who had no notion 
of the position of our ship in the immense harbour. 
And as I stood at the top of this sombre and menacing 
street of adventure, a large rat crept out of the 
moonlit gutter and started along the street. And 
then another. After garbage. I stood entranced, 
for rats do not forage in the streets in England. 
And I became aware suddenly of someone who had 
managed to emerge from one of those immense and 
seemingly immovable portals — a figure in an opera 
cloak and French top-hat, and very drunk. A 
long white kid glove dangled from his hand and he 
waved it gently toward me as he swayed across the 
street. All without a sound, save a fiacre rattling 
out of the Cannebiere just beyond. Swayed into the 
middle of the street, where the shadow lay like some- 
thing solid and impregnable, the fingers of the long 
white kid glove dragging on the ground — when he 
saw a rat, and giving a sudden lurch, vanished for- 
ever into the shadow. The fiacre rattled louder; 
and turning, I discovered the torpedo lieutenant 
inside of it, very relieved, to find me after all. 

Now here are the beginnings of tales like "The 



no HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

Arrow of Gold/' tales founded upon vivid but un- 
substantial memories. I shall never forget that 
man in the opera cloak with his preposterous air 
of mysterious gaiety and his long white kid glove. 
He will remain with me for ever, an interesting, 
briUiant, and sterile phantom. 

In the meanwhile I have been trying to explain 
the essential psychology of Doiia Rita, that elusive 
and shadowy being about whom, presumably, "The 
Arrow of Gold" is written. Dona Rita kept goats 
on the Spanish mountains when she was a child. My 
companion gets that with facility: she kept sheep and 
helped her mother on the hills near Sophia. Yes, 
bare- footed and bare-legged, looking down now for a 
moment at the high French heels of her white shoes. 
Well, then. Dona Rita is now rich and unhappy. 
Pourquoi ? Does she not love that homme de mer. 
Monsieur George? Humph! She sets one elbow 
among the dishes and regards me attentively from 
under the brim of an immense straw hat trimmed 
with osprey. Les hommes de mer, she murmurs, 
and looks away toward the kaleidoscopic procession 
passing through the Passage Kraemer. She forgets 
**The Arrow of Gold." Books are nothing to her, 
as I expect they were nothing to Dona Rita. And 
like Dona Rita she is one of those beings who inspire 
love, who disturb the dim and ineluctable memories 
of the past, and who give to the most transient of our 
illusions the aspect of a grave resolution of the soul. 



REVIEWING BOOKS iii 

*'She was supremely lovable," says Monsieur George 
of Dona Rita, and therein he compresses the theme 
of the book. Perhaps it was an error to assume 
that none of these characters can walk the soHd 
earth. Perhaps the arrow of gold finds its mark. 
Perhaps Dona Rita waits here, while I, pauvre 
homme de meVy restore the canvas bag of books 
to the care of M. Eskenazi. 

So few women are "supremely lovable." 



ON A BALCONY 



There are some men whom a staggering emotional 
shock, so far from making them mental invaUds for 
hfe, seems, on the other hand, to awaken, to galvan- 
ize, to arouse into an almost incredible activity 
of soul. They are somewhat in the same cast as 
the elderly expressman who emerged from a subway 
smash untouched, save that he began to write free 
verse. Those who do not read free verse may 
consider the comparison too flippant. But the 
point must be insisted on, that there is far too much 
talk of love and grief benumbing the faculties, 
turning the hair gray, and destroying a man's 
interest in his work. Grief has made many a man 
look younger. 

Or, one may compare the emotions with wine. 
The faculties of some men become quiescent with 
wine. Others are Hke Sheridan writing "The School 
for Scandal" Hght on through the night, with a 
decanter of port at his elbow getting emptier as the 
pages (and Sheridan) got full; or Hke Mozart drinking 
wine to stimulate his brain to work, and employing 
his wife to keep him awake at the same time. 

112 



ON A BALCONY 113 

There was a singular disparity between the above 
trivial reflections and the scene upon which they 
were staged. I was seated on the balcony outside 
my room on the third floor of the Grand Hotel 
Splendide Palace at Smyrna. I was to leave that 
afternoon for Constantinople, having been reheved, 
and I had been watching with some attention the 
arrival of the destroyer upon whose deck, as a passen- 
ger, I was to travel. 

I was distracted from this pastime by the growing 
excitement in the street below. Greek troops, 
headed by extremely warlike bands, were marching 
along the quay, gradually extending themselves 
into a thin yellowish-green Hne with sparkhng 
bayonets, and congesting the populace into the 
fronts of the cafes. A fantastic notion assailed 
me that my departure was to be carried out with 
military honours. There is an obscure memoran- 
dum extant in some dusty ofiice-file, in which I am 
referred to as "embarrassing His Majesty's Govern- 
ment" — the nearest I have ever got to what is 
known as public life. The intoxication engendered 
proved conclusively that public life was not my metier^ 

But I was not to be deceived for long on this 
occasion. Motor-cars drove up, bearing Httle flags 
on sticks. A Greek general, a French admiral, an 
ItaHan captain, and a British lieutenant of the 
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve jumped out of 
their respective chariots and, after saluting with 



114 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

the utmost decorum, shook hands with the utmost 
cordiaHty. Looked at from above, the scene was 
singularly like the disturbance caused by stirring up 
a lot of ants with a stick. 

By this time it was perfectly obvious that some- 
thing more than the departure of a mere Heutenant 
of reserve was in the air. I knew that Royal Naval 
Volunteer Heutenant, and the hope, the incipient 
prospect, of another taste of public life died within 
me. After all, I reflected (and this is how I led up 
to the other reflections already recorded), after 
all, one must choose between Obscurity with Effici- 
ency, and Fame with its inevitable collateral of 
BluflT. There is a period, well on toward middle 
life, when a man can say such things to himself and 
feel comforted. 

I knew that Royal Naval Volunteer lieutenant, 
and I began to recall some remarks he had made the 
previous evening at dinner. He had said something 
about some big man coming. This was at the British 
Naval Residency, which was to be found, by the 
intrepid, in the Austrian Consulate. The British 
Naval Residency filled the Austrian Consulate 
very much as a penny fills the pocket of a fur over- 
coat. You could spend a pleasant morning wander- 
ing through the immense chambers of the Austrian 
Consulate and come away without having discovered 
any one save a fat Greek baby whose mother washed 
in some secret subterranean chamber. 



ON A BALCONY 115 

I was supposed to be messing at the British Naval 
Residency. I had even been offered by my country's 
naval representative (this same Royal Naval Volun- 
teer lieutenant) the use of any room I liked, to sleep 
in, if I had a bed, and bed-clothes to put on it. 
He even offered me the throne-room — a gigantic 
affair about the size of the Pennsylvania Terminal 
and containing three hassocks and a catafalque 
like a half-finished sky-scraper. At night, when we 
dined, an intrepid explorer who, we may suppose, 
had reached the great doors after perils which had 
turned him gray, would see, afar off across the 
acres of dried and splitting parquetry flooring, a 
table with one tiny electric light, round which 
several humans were feasting. If his travels had 
not bereft him of his senses, he might have gathered 
that these extraordinary beings were continually 
roaring with laughter at their own wit. Out of the 
gloom at intervals would materialize a sinister 
oriental figure bearing bottles whose contents he 
poured out in libations before his humorous masters. 

This frightful scene (near on midnight) was the 
British Naval Residency at dinner. I ought to 
have paid attention — only I was distracted by an 
imaginary bowstring murder going on in the throne- 
room beyond the vast folding doors — and then I 
would have heard the details of the function taking 
place below my hotel windows. But it is impossible 
to pay attention to the details of a ceremonial while a 



ii6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

beautiful Circassian, on her knees between two 
husky Ottoman slaves who are hauHng at the cord 
which has been passed in a clove-hitch about her 
neck, is casting a last glance of despair upon the 
ragged and cobwebbed scarlet silk portiere. It 
may be objected that, as the tragedy was an im- 
aginary one, I was not compelled to dwell upon it. 
The reader and I will not quarrel over the point. 
I will even make him a present of the fact that there 
are no beautiful Circassians in that part of the 
world. They have all been kidnapped and carried 
away to the seraglios of our popular novelists, who 
marry them, in the last chapter, to dashing young 
college men of the "clean-cut" breed. But the 
British Naval Resident's cook is an artist, and the 
British Naval Resident's kiimmel, while it closes 
the front doors of the mind to the trivial tattle of 
conversation, draws up the dark curtain that hangs 
at the back and reveals a vast and shadowy stage, 
whereon are enacted the preposterous performances 
of the souls of men. 

II 

But however hazy I might be myself about this 
event, all Smyrna seemed cognizant. As I sat on 
my balcony, I was joined by the children of the fam- 
ily in the next room. Who the family in the next 
room may be I am somewhat at a loss to explain. 
At first I imagined they were a family of Russian re- 



ON A BALCONY 117 

fugees named Buttinsky; but Katia, the eldest, who 
is ten and speaks French, says her father is a major 
of artillery and is named Priam Callipoliton. From 
occasional glances through the open door while 
passing, one imagines that a married major in the 
army of the Hellenes has a fierce time when he is at 
home. There are three beds in the room, besides 
a gas-stove and a perambulator. Leaning over my 
balcony railing one early morning, and poking with 
a walking-stick at an enigmatic crimson patch 
on the Callipoliton window-sill, I discovered, to 
my horror, that it was a raw liver, left out to keep 
cool. 

Priam seems to be fairly hard at it at the front. 
Madame, a shapeless and indomitable creature, 
regards me with that look of mysterious yet com- 
fortable camaraderie which women with large families 
seem to reserve for strange bachelors. I hke her. 
She uses my balcony (having none of her own) 
with a frank disregard of the small change of etiquette 
which is beyond praise. I come up from the street 
in the middle of the morning and find Madame and 
the jemme de chamhre leaning comfortably on my 
balcony-rail, a sisterly pair, each couple of high 
French heels worn sideways, each broad-hipped 
skirt gaping at the back, each with a stray hank 
of hair waving wildly in the strong breeze blowing 
across the glittering gulf. If I cough, they turn 
and nod genially. If I explain apologetically that 



ii8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 



1 



I wish to change, they nod again and shut the big 
jalousies upon me and my astounding modesty. 

And if they are not there, the children are. Katia 
is the possessor of three small sisters and a small 
brother. They are Evanthe, Theodosia, and Sophia 
with Praxiteles sifted in somewhere between them. 
They were rather amazing at first. " Etes-vous 
marie F" they squeaked in their infantile Hellenic 
trebles. ^' Pas encore'' only made them point 
melodramatic fingers at a photograph, with their 
ridiculous black pigtails hanging over their shoulders. 
'^C'est elle, peut-etre. Oui? Tres jolie!" And the 
pigtails vibrated with vehement nods. 

They use my balcony. Praxiteles has a horrifying 
habit of sitting astride the rail. Katia takes the 
most comfortable chair and asks me genially why 
I do not go and make a promenade. ^^ Avec voire 
fianceey' she adds, with enervating audacity. And 
I am supposed to have the exclusive use of this room, 
with balcony, for three pounds (Turkish) per diem! 

The point, however, is that, if this be the state 
of affairs on ordinary days, on this particular morning 
my balcony, like all the other balconies, is full. 
Madame and the femme de- chamhre are there. Katia, 
Evanthe, Theodosia, Sophia, and Praxiteles are to 
be heard of all men. Praxiteles endeavours to 
drag an expensive pair of field-glasses from their 
case, and is restrained only by main force. George, 
the floor-porter, a sagacious but unsatisfactory 



ON A BALCONY 119 

creature, who plays a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde 
game with the femme de chamhre, comes in, on the 
pretence of cleaning the electric light fittings, and 
drifts casually to the balcony. George, descended 
no doubt from the famous George family of Cap- 
padocia, if rung for, goes away to find Marthe, the 
femme de chamhre. Marthe appears, merely to go 
away again to find George. It is a relief to see the 
two of them at once, if only to dispel the dreadful 
notion that George is Marthe and Marthe a sinister 
manifestation of George. 

It is a gratifying thing to record, too, that all 
these people are perfectly wilHng that I should see 
the show as well. Katia, commanded by Madame, 
resigns the best chair, sulks a moment on one leg, 
and then forgets her annoyance in the thunder of 
the guns booming from the Greek warships in the 
roadstead. I forge my way through and find a 
stranger in the corner of my balcony. 

For a moment I am in the grip of that elusive 
yet impenetrable spirit of benevolent antipathy 
which is the main cause of the Englishman's reputa- 
tion for icy coldness toward those to whom he has 
not been introduced. Now you can either break 
ice or melt it; but the best way is to let the real human 
being, whom you can see through the cold blue 
transparencies, thaw himself out, as he will in time. 
Very few foreigners give us time. They jump on 
the ice with both feet. They attempt to be breezy 



I20 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

and English, and leave us aghast at their inconceiva- 
ble fatuity. While we are struggling within our 
deliquescent armour, and on the very point of escap- 
ing into the warm sunUght of genial conversation, 
they freeze us solid again with some frightful banal- 
ity or racial solecism. The reader will perceive 
from this that the Englishman is not having such 
a pleasant time in the world as some people imagine. 

However, the stranger on my balcony turns out 
to be, not a foreigner, but another Englishman, 
which is an even worse trial to some of us. He is, of 
course, smoking a cigarette. He wears an old straw 
hat, an old Hnen suit, and his boots are slightly 
burst at the sides. His moustache and scanty hair 
are iron gray. His eyes are pale blue. While he 
talks they remain fixed upon CordeHo, which is on 
the other side of the gulf. No doubt, if he were 
talking in CordeHo, they would be fixed upon 
Smyrna. He wears a plain gold wedding-ring. His 
clothes are styHsh, which is not to say they are new. 
They might have been worn by a wealthy English- 
man abroad, say nine or ten years ago. No Greek 
tailor, for example, would hole all those buttons 
on the cuffs, nor would he make the coat-collar 
" lay '' with such glovelike contiguity to the shoulders. 
Also, the trousers hang as Greek trousers never hang, 
in spite of their bagginess at the knees. 

Keeping a watchful eye upon CordeHo, he bends 
toward me as I sit in my chair, and apologizes for 



ON A BALCONY 121 

the intrusion. Somehow the phrase seems homehke, 
Greeks, for example, never "intrude": they come 
in, generally bringing a powerful whifF of garhc 
with them, and go out again, unregretted. They 
do not admit an intrusion. Even my friend Kaspar 
Dring, Stab-Oher-Leutnant attached to the defunct 
Imperial German Consulate, would scarcely ap- 
preciate the fine subtlety implied in apologizing 
for an intrusion. It may be that so gay a personality 
cannot conceive a psychological condition which his 
undefeated optimism would fail to illuminate. 
And so, when the stranger, who is, I imagine, on 
the verge of forty, murmurs his apology for his in- 
trusion, I postulate for him a past emerging from 
the muzzy-minded ideals of the English middle class. 
He adds that, in fact, he had made a mistake in 
the number of the room. Quite thought this was 
number seventy-seven, which was, I might know, 
the official residence of the Bolivian vice-consul, a 
great friend of his. Had arranged to see the affair 
from the Bolivian vice-consul's balcony. However, 
it didn't matter now, so long as I didn't mind — 
What? Of course, I knew what was going on. 
There! There he is, just stepping out of the launch. 
That's Skaramapopulos shaking hands with him 
now. English, eh? Just look at him! By Jove! 
who can beat us, eh? And just look at that up- 
holstered old pork-butcher, with his eighteen medals 
and crosses, and never saw active service in his hfe. 



122 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

Too busy making his percentage on — What? No, 
not him — he's been asleep all his life. Oh, it was 
a game! However, now he's come, we may get 
something Kke order into the country. Did I mind 
if he took a few notes ? 

I did not mind. I tipped a member of the Calli- 
politon family off one of the other chairs, and begged 
my new friend to sit down. I fetched my binoculars 
and examined the scene below, where a famous 
British general stood, with his tan-gloved hand at 
the salute beside his formidable monocle, and was 
introduced to the Greek general, the French admiral, 
the ItaHan captain, and the British lieutenant. 
"A cavalryman," I muttered, as he started off down 
the line of Greek troops, hand at the salute, the sun 
gleaming on his brown harness and shining spurs. 
The Greek band was playing "See the Conquering 
Hero Comes," very much off the key, and it almost 
seemed as if the tune was too much for the conquer- 
ing hero himself, for he dived suddenly into a motor- 
car and moved rapidly away. Whereupon the 
band took breath and began to form fours, the 
yellowish green lines of troops coagulated into 
oblong clots, the motor cars, with their little flags, 
whooped and snarled at the crowds swarming, 
from the cafes and side streets, and the quay began 
to assume its wonted appearance (from above) 
of a disorganized ant-heap. 

And my balcony began also to thin out. The 



ON A BALCONY 123 

Callipoliton faction dwindled to Madame, who was 
established on a chair at the other end, elbow on the 
rail, contemplating Mount Sipylus Hke a disillusioned 
sybil. Katia bounced back for a moment to inquire, 
in a piercing treble, whether my baggage was ready, 
and if so, should George descend with it to the 
entrance hall? 

I informed her that, if George was really bursting 
to do something useful, he could go ahead and do 
as she said. 

She bounced away, and later the baggage was 
found down below; but I am inclined to believe 
that George sublet the contract to the Armenian 
boots and merely took a rake-ofF. George is built 
on those lines. 

*'So you are a reporter," I remarked to my friend, 
eyeing the mangy-looking note book he was returning 
to his pocket. 

"Oh, yes," he assured me, adding hastily, though 
I had made no comment, "Tm getting on very 
well, too." 

He didn't look it, but I let that pass. You can 
never tell these millionaires nowadays. I thought 
I was safe in asking what paper he worked for. 

"Fve an article in to-day's Mercure de Smyrne. 
You've seen it, I suppose?" 

I hadn't. I'd never even heard of it. I had 
read the Levanty the Independent^ the Matin, the 
Orient, and so forth; but the Mercure was a new one. 



124 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

It came out of his pocket like a shot — a single 
sheet with three columns on each side, three fourths 
of the back occupied by an insurance company's ad. 

*'This is mine," he informed me, laying a finger 
on a couple of paragraphs signed "Bijou." 

The article was entitled, ^^ Les Bas de Soicy^ 
and was in the boulevardese style dear to the Parisian 
journalist. 

*'You write French easily?" I said, quite unable 
to keep down my envy. 

He waved his cigarette. 

**Just the same as English," he assured me. 
** Italian and Spanish also." 

"Then for the love of Michael Angelo why do you 
stop here in this part of the world? You might 
make your thousands a year on a big paper as a 
special commission. Why don't you go home?" 

Ill 

Well, he told me why he didn't go home, though 
not in so many words. If the reader will turn back 
to the beginning, he will see some reflections upon 
the behaviour of men under emotional shock and 
stress. It is possible he may have already turned 
back, wondering what those remarks portended, 

what it was all about anyway. Well 

It seems that Mr. Satterley Thwaiteson (I quote 
his card, which he pressed upon me) had been in 
the Levant some time. He had had a very pleasant 



ON A BALCONY 125 

probation as articled pupil to an architect in Nor- 
wich — did I know it? — and had made quite a hobby 
of studying French architecture, in his own time, 
of course. Used to take his autumn vacation in 
northern France, visiting the abbeys and ruins 
and so forth. Got quite a facility, for an English- 
man, in the language. Perhaps it was because 
of this that, when he had been in a Bloomsbury 
architect's office for a year or so, and a clerk of' 
works was needed for a Protestant church which 
some society was erecting in Anatolia, he, Satterley 
Thwaiteson, got the job. "Secured the appoint- 
ment," were his exact words, but I imagine he meant, 
really, that he got the job. He came out, on one 
of the Pappayanni boats — did I know them.^ — 
and as far as I could gather, got his church up with- 
out any part of it falling down before the consecra- 
tion service. Which, considering the Levantine 
contractor's conceptions of probity, was a wonder. 
So far Mr. Satterley Thwaiteson's history seemed 
simple enough. Like many others of his imperial 
race, he had gone abroad and had added to the pres- 
tige of the English name by erecting a Protestant 
church in a country where Protestants are as plenti- 
ful as pineapples in Labrador. But — and here 
seems to be the joint in the stick — he didn't go 
home. All the time regarding Cordelio across the 
gulf with his pale-blue eyes, an expression of extra- 
ordinary pride and pleasure comes over his features. 



126 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

and banishes for a few moments the more permanent 
indication of a man who had lost the art of Hfe. 
Extraordinary pride and pleasure! He didn't go 
home. Never did go home. It is obvious that 
the memory of this emotional treachery to the call 
of home is something to be treasured as one of 
the great things in life. No, on the contrary, he got 
married out here. Yes, a foreigner, too — a Rouman- 
ian. And they didn't get married in his wonderful 
Protestant church either, for she was a Roman Catho- 
lic. ** Here's a photo of her as she was then." 

He takes from his pocket an old wallet stuffed 
with folded letters, and fishes out a small flat oval 
frame that opens on a hinge. There are two por- 
traits, photos coloured like miniatures. One is 
the Mr. Satterley Thwaiteson of that day fifteen 
or sixteen years ago, not so different save as to the 
hair, of which there is not much at present. But the 
woman is beautiful. In these days of high-tension 
fiction, when noveHsts, like the Greek in one of 
Aristophanes's plays, walk about, each with his 
string of lovely female slaves, it is tame enough 
to say a woman is beautiful. And perhaps it would 
be better to say that this woman in the Httle coloured 
photo was startling. The bronze hair piled high, 
the broad fair brow, the square indomitable chin, 
the pallor contrasting with the heavily lashed brown 
eyes, the exquisite lips, all formed a combination 
which must have had a rather curious effect upon 



1 



ON A BALCONY 127 

the studious young man from Norwich via Blooms- 
bury. Filled him with pride for one thing, or he 
wouldn't be showing this picture to a stranger. 

But what struck me about that girl's picture, 
even before he fished out a picture postcard photo 
of his family taken a month or two ago, was some- 
thing in her face which can be expressed only by 
the word rapacity. Not, be it noted, a vampire. 
If the truth were known, there are very few vam- 
pires about, outside of high-tension fiction. But I 
saw rapacity, and it seemed a curious thing to find 
in a woman who, it transpired, had married him 
and borne him children, eight in all, and had made 
him so happy that he had never gone home. 

For that was what had aged him and paralyzed 
him and kept him there until he was a shabby 
failure — happiness. That was what brought to 
his face that expression of extraordinary pride and 
pleasure. As I listened to his tale I wondered, and 
at the back of my mind, on the big shadowy stage 
of which I spoke, there seemed to be something 
going on which he forgot to mention. And when 
he showed me, with tender pride, the picture- 
postcard photo of his wife and her eight children, 
I could not get rid of the notion that there was some- 
thing rapacious about her. Even now she was hand- 
some, in a stout and domineering kind of way. It 
was absurd to accuse such a woman of rapacity. 
Was she not a pearl.? Everything a woman should 



128 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

do, she had done. She had been fruitful, she had 
been a good mother, a virtuous wife, and her hus- 
band assumed an expression of extraordinary pride 
and pleasure when he showed a stranger her portrait. 
His happiness in her was so rounded and complete 
that he would never have another thought away 
from her. He would never go to England again. 
Was not this marvellous.? 

As I pondered upon the marvel of it, I heard him 
telling me how he had found some difficulty in 
making a living out of the few architectural com- 
missions which happened along, and gradually 
fell into the habit of giving lessons in English to 
Greeks and Armenians who were anxious to achieve 
social distinction. And when the war came, and he 
was shut up with everybody else in the city, he had 
to depend entirely upon the language lessons. And 
then, of course, he "wrote for the press" as well, 
as he had shown me. He was very successful, 
he thought, taking everything into consideration. 
Why, he would get three pounds Turkish (about 
four dollars) for that little thing. Always signed 
himself "Bijou." His wife liked it. It was her 
name for him when they were lovers. And though, 
of course, the teaching was hard work, for Armenian 
girls were inconceivably thick-headed, and some- 
times it occupied him twelve or fourteen hours a 
day, yet it paid and he was happy. 

And in the very middle of my irritation at him 



1 



ON A BALCONY 129 

for harping on what he called happiness, I saw that 
I was right, after all: that girl had been rapacious. 
She had devoured his personality, fed on it, destroyed 
it, and had grown stout and virtuous upon it. His 
hair was thin and gray, he had a hunted and dilapi- 
dated look, and his boots were slightly burst at the 
sides. And he was happy. He had abandoned 
his profession, and he toiled like a packhorse for the 
bare necessities; yet he was happy. He was proud. 
It was plain he believed his position among men 
was to be gauged by his having won his peerless 
woman. He rambled on about local animosities 
and politics, and it was forced upon me that he 
would not do for a great newspaper. He would 
have to go away and find out how the people of 
the world thought and felt about things, and I was 
sure he would never consent to do that. His wife 
would not like it. And he might not be happy. 

It is evening, and the sun, setting behind Cordelio 
shines straight through my room and along the 
great dusty corridor beyond. In the distance can 
be seen those antiphonal personalities, Marthe 
and George, in harmony at last, waiting to waylay 
me for a tip. On the balcony is the mother of all 
the Callipolitons, elbow on the rail, contemplating 
Mount Sipylus like some shrewd sybil who has 
found out the worthlessness of most of the secrets 
of the gods. 



I30 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

When I have packed an attache case, I am ready. 
The destroyer on which I am to travel to Constan- 
tinople is signalling the flagship. In an hour she 
will depart. I go out once more on the balcony, 
to contemplate for the last time the famiHar scene. 
The roadstead sparkles in the sun and the distant 
waters are aflame. The immense heave of the 
mountain-ranges is purple and ruddy gold, and in 
the distance I can see white houses in quiet valleys 
above the gray-green of the olive grounds. There 
IS one in particular, among great cypresses, and I 
turn the binoculars upon it for a brief sentimental 
moment. As I return the glasses to the case, Ma- 
dame regards me with attention. 

" Vous partez ce soir, monsieur? " she murmurs. 

And I nod, wondering why one can detect nothing 
of rapacity in her rather tired face. ^'Ouiy madame, 
je pars pour Constantinople ce soir,'' I assure 
her, thinking to engage her in conversation. 

So far, in spite of our propinquity and the vocifer- 
ous curiosity of Kataia, we have not spoken together 
to any extent. 

''Etapres?'' 

^' ApreSy madame, je vais a Make, Marseille, Paris, 
et Londres. Peut-etre, a V Amerique aussi — je ne 
sais pas J" 

^'Mon Dieuf* She seems quietly shocked at the 
levity of a man who prances about the world Hke 
this. Then comes the inevitable query: ^' Fous 



ON A BALCONY 131 

etes marie, monsieur?'^ and the inevitable reply, 
*'Pas encore,'' 

She abandons Mount Sipylus for a while and turns 
on the chair, one high-heeled and rather slatternly 
shoe tapping on the marble flags. '^ Mais dites moi, 
monsieur; vous avez une amante de cceur, sans doutef 

^^Vous croyez qal PourquoiV 

She shrugs her shoulders. 

^* N'importe. C'est vrai. Vous etes triste." 

**Oui. Mais c'est la guerre." 

She was silent a moment, observing later that I 
was a philosopher, which was flattering but irrele- 
vant. And then she said something that I carried 
away with me, as the destroyer fled over the dark 
waters of the iEgean. 

'^Oui, c'est la guerre, mais il faut que vous nou^ 
bliez, monsieur, que chaque voyage est un petit mort." 

I left her there, looking out across the hard blue 
glitter of the gulf, when I went down to go aboard. 



THE SHINING HOUR 

The destroyer, driven by her three powerful turbines, 
moves forward in a series of long vibrant lunges. As 
she careens in each of her rhythmical pauses, there 
mingles with the interminable hum of her revolving 
motors the complaining sough and hiss of the white 
spume flying from her high-flaring forecastle, and 
overflowing with a dazzling commotion the opaque 
blue of the heaving sea. Far forward, in the shadows 
beneath that same forecastle, screened from light and 
weather, and the flat white tops of their saucy caps 
catching the pale glow of a dirty electric globe, sit 
several bluejackets, the blue-gray smoke of their 
cigarettes vanishing like strips of impalpable gauze 
overside. On the bridge a solitary gleaming figure in 
oilskins and peaked hat maintains itself in equilib- 
rium with the intelligent precision of a motionless 
pendulum. Nearer, the torpedoes in the sinister 
hooded tubes strain slightly at their lashings between 
the huge squat cowls, with their wired orifices, which 
lead to the forced-draft fans of the bright, clean, 
silent stokeholds. The three short and flattened 
funnels are raked, so that, viewed from astern they 
have an air of haughty and indomitable endurance, 

132 



I 

1 



THE SHINING HOUR 133 

like that of a man driving a team at furious speed 
and leaning back in derision. And from their 
throats pour torrents of hot gases visible only by 
the tremulous agitation of the atmosphere to leeward. 
At intervals, as the slim ovalled stern rises higher 
than usual, the sunlight ghnts on the bronze hand- 
wheels of the after gun and gives a deHcate sheen to 
the green-painted depth-charges in their cradles by 
the rail. And there is an ominous roar from the 
white effervescence below, a roar which dies away 
immediately the stern subsides, and one can see 
again the emerald and jade and cream of the wake 
stretching like a floating ribbon to the limits of 
vision. 

And as we proceed, to use a naval euphemism for 
any adjustment of position, whether carried out at 
one knot or one hundred, the scene through which we 
are passing changes with the fabulous disregard of 
rational probabilities which is experienced in dreams. 
The islands of the ^Egean seem to be playing, as in 
mythological times, some ponderous and mysterious 
game. They come and go. They execute protean 
transformations of outline and chameleon changes of 
lustre and hue. As we speed westward the sun 
behind Olympos seems, like King Charles, an un- 
conscionable time dying: and then, as the course is 
changed to the northeastward he drops with dis- 
concerting suddenness and a polychromatic splash 
into a transfigured ocean. And a staid and re- 



134 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

spectable cargo-boat, doing her twelve knots per- 
haps, heaves into clear view, slides past, and vanishes 
with the indecent haste of a funeral reproduced on 
the cinematograph. 

Such is life at thirty-five knots. 

On such an occasion, too, as has been described, a 
benevolent and keen-eyed aviator, had he been 
passing overhead, might have seen, huddled upon 
the after deck of the destroyer, a figure in naval uni- 
form with his oilskins up to his ears, keeping a 
watchful eye upon a khaki-colored sea-bag and a 
couple of battered suitcases which threatened at 
every swing to come adrift and slide over the smooth 
linoleum-covered deck into the sea. And being 
familiar with that part of the world and the naval 
habits pertaining thereto, this aviator would have 
surmised that the figure would be, very likely, a 
Lieutenant of Reserve on his way home, who had 
been granted a passage on a destroyer to enable him 
to join another warship which would consent to take 
him to Malta. 

And his surmise would have been perfectly correct. 

But what this benevolent aviator would not have 
divined as he swept over and on, and ultimately 
picked up his next landmark, which was Mount 
Athos, would be that the Lieutenant of Reserve 
had made a vow to write an article before he got 
home, and that he was feeling depressed at the ex- 
treme unHkelihood of his ever doing so if his transit 



I 



THE SHINING HOUR 135 

was to be conducted seated on a bronze scuttle and 
holding on to his worldly possessions as they slipped 
and swayed. 

Another thing the aviator would never have 
guessed was that this Lieutenant of Reserve, addicted 
as he was to literature, had never been able to take it 
seriously. It was almost as if he and literature had 
had a most fascinating intrigue for a good many 
years yet he had always refused to marry her! He 
had never been able to settle down day after day to a 
hum-drum, ding-dong battle with a manuscript, 
every week seeing another batch finished and off to 
the printers: a steady, working journeyman of let- 
ters. He had heard of such people. He had read 
interviews with eminent votaries of this sort of thing 
and had taken their statements (uttered without the 
flicker of an eyelash) with a grain of salt. He had 
always been ready with a perfectly valid reason 
which excused his own failure to do such things. He 
was a Lieutenant of Reserve and it was impossible, 
with the daily duties and grave responsibilities of 
such a position, to concentrate upon anything else. 

All nonsense, of course, as any one who has seen a 
Lieutenant of Reserve at work could tell you. Be- 
sides, it is well known that men at the front wrote 
poems "under fire," that army officers sat amid shot 
and shell and calmly dictated b est sellers. It is 
equally well known that, with practice, any naval 
officer of average intelligence can be educated to fire 



136 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

a. fifteen-inch gun with one hand and write a villanelle 
with the other. As for aviators, they may be said 
not only to *'Hsp in numbers" as was said of Pope, 
but they take as many flights of fancy as they do 
over the hues. So there is no real reason for a mere 
Lieutenant of Reserve faiHng to turn out a mo- 
notonously regular ten thousand words a day, let us 
say, except his own laziness and incapacity. And 
this particular Lieutenant of Reserve felt this in his 
heart; and so, as soon as the cares of office fell from 
his shoulders he vowed a vow that each day he would 
do a regular whack at this proposed article, that 
each day he would improve the shining hour. 

Moreover, and above all, there was the great 
example of Anthony Trollope. Possibly the reader 
has heard of that eminent best seller of a past age, 
whom nothing could dismay. For Trollope's chief 
claim to the pop-eyed reverence of posterity seems to 
be that he reduced writing to the methodical precision 
of a carpenter planing a board. His slogan was not 
"art for art's sake,'' or "quality not quantity," or 
anything like that at all. It was not even that 
ancient piece of twaddle, '^ nulla dies sine linea.'' It 
was: "a page every quarter of an hour." For years 
the Lieutenant of Reserve had been haunted by the 
picture evoked by that simple phrase — the picture of 
a big beefy person with mutton-chop whiskers and a 
quill pen, sitting squarely at a table with a clock 
before him; and four times every hour would be 



THE SHINING HOUR 137 

heard the hiss of a sheet torn off and flung aside and a 
fresh one begun. It is no good arguing that they 
didn't use writing blocks in those days. A man 
who worked his brain by the clock would no doubt 
invent a tear-off* pad for his own use. I have seen 
him, in nightmares, and heard the hiss. And noth- 
ing could stop him. At sea he was just the same. 
The ship might roll, the waves run mountains high, 
sailors get themselves washed off" and drowned, 
engines break down, boiler-furnaces collapse and 
propeller-shafts carry away — nimporte. Wedged 
into his seat in the cabin Trollope drove steadily on. 
Every fifteen minutes, click! another page finished. 
If a chapter happened to be completed, half way 
down a page, he did not stop. On! on! not even 
when a novel was finished did he waste any time. He 
took a fresh sheet of paper perhaps (with a steady 
glance at the clock) and went right on at the next one. 
There was something heroic about this, one feels, 
but there is an uneasy feehng at the back of one's 
mind that the man had mistaken his vocation. Why 
did he do it.? Had he a frightful vision of a pubhc at 
its last gasp for lack of nourishing fiction, and so 
toiled on with undiminished ardour, hour after hour, 
day after day? Had he committed some dark and 
desperate crime, and so was seeking to do penance 
by thus immolating himself upon the altar of un- 
remitting labour.? Otherwise, why did he do it.? For 
the theory that he liked doing it or that it was a 



138 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

perfectly natural thing for an author to do, is un- 
tenable. There is a story that he did not believe 
very much in inspiration, or rather that he did not 
believe in waiting for it; and one is bound to admit 
that his novels seem to prove it. But if a man does 
not believe in waiting for inspiration, what is his 
idea in writing at all? It is like a man saying that he 
does not believe in waiting for love, that one woman 
is very much like another as far as he is concerned, 
that those who express finical preferences are not 
serious citizens concerned only with keeping up the 
birthrate. . . . 

Nevertheless it must be admitted that the Trol- 
lopian tradition has its fascinations for those who, 
having some turn for writing, are preoccupied more 
with the fact of achievement than the fun of the 
thing. The great point, they feel, is to get it done 
(and paid for). They compose direct on to a type- 
writer, it is rumoured, and even employ a secretary to 
take it down. And when the shift is over, one sup- 
poses they go away and play golf. No doubt in 
time the secretary is able to cope with the work un- 
aided. It is difficult to see why not. 

To the Lieutenant of Reserve, however, these 
considerations were not of much importance. This 
humdrum method of intensive quantity-production 
might destroy the soul if persisted in for years. He 
had no such intention. He merely wished to see 
whether it could be carried on for a short while. 



THE SHINING HOUR 139 

And when he and his baggage were tumbled ofF the 
destroyer into a picket-boat and carried aboard of a 
sloop-of-war bound for Malta, he began to nerve 
himself for the trial. The time had come, he felt, 
to improve the shining hour. 

For of course, with that curious self-deception 
that seems to give an air of unreality to everything 
an author says to himself, he was quite sure he knew 
what it was he had to write. Quite sure. It was 
to be an article of, say three or four thousand words. 
There was to be no nonsense about ''getting stuck" 
in the middle of it, or changing it into something else 
and making it longer. He would write it in his 
bunk, pad propped up on knee, for there is always 
too much noise in these ward-rooms with the gramo- 
phone in one corner, the paymaster's typewriter 
going in another, and half a dozen men playing 
cards in between. And smiling a little, he requested 
a mess-rating to show him his cabin. 

A sloop, the uninitiated may be informed, is not a 
vessel primarily designed to encourage the pro- 
duction of literature. She is, on the contrary, a 
slender, two-funnelled, wasp-waisted affair of un- 
deniable usefulness during what were known as 
"hostilities." She is subdivided into minute spaces 
by steel bulkheads with dished and battened rubber- 
fjointed doors. The ordinary pathways of humanity 
are encumbered by innumerable wheels, plugs, 
pipes, wires, extension rods, and screwed down 



140 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

hatchways. And when it became necessary to send 
home Lieutenants of Reserve and many other ranks 
and ratings, so that a grateful country might pay 
them off and leave them to shift for themselves, the 
Navy found it increasingly difficult to find passages 
for them, and decided to go into the passenger 
business itself. And the world having been made 
perfectly safe for democracy, it was felt that any- 
thing savouring of comfort would be out of place 
in their ships. The stern, iron-bound and rock- 
ribbed veterans who were coming home would 
scorn the soft delights of a wire mattress or shaving 
glass. These ammunition-chambers, for example, 
are the very thing. Fix 'em up. And in a few 
hours four bunks would be fitted up in a space about 
the size of an ordinary office strong room. There is 
neither light nor ventilation; but no matter. Give 
'em a couple of electrics. They're only here for a 
few days anyhow. 

And here we are! There are three other Lieuten- 
ants of Reserve in the other three bunks and the 
conversation is general. The gentleman below me, 
who is smoking strong Turkish cigarettes, has just 
come down from the Black Sea where he has been 
employed resuscitating a temporarily defunct Rus- 
sian cruiser. Some job, he avers. The Russians 
may be great ideaHsts and artists; they may even 
have a knack at the ballet and show us a thing or two 
about novel-writing, but they are out of their ele- 



THE SHINING HOUR 141 

ment as sailormen. You cannot navigate a ship 
with the wild, free movement of the figures in a 
Bakst design. You must cultivate a different at- 
titude toward material forces in an engine room that 
is adumbrated in modern Russian fiction. This is 
corroborated by Mr. Top-Bunk on the other side. 
Fine job they'd given him, a respectable engineer. 
Did we know Novorossisk at all.? Yes, we chimed, 
we'd loaded grain there in the old days. Up the 
River Bug, wasn't it.^* Yep. Well, a place not so 
far up, Ekaterin-something. They'd mussed up the 
electric-power plant. We had to get it going again. 
To begin with, these idealists, these makers of a new 
and happier world, had let the boilers go short of 
water, had brought down the furnace-crowns and 
started a good many stays. Also they had cut a good 
deal of indispensable copper away from the switch- 
board and, presumably, sold it. Or perhaps they 
were merely putting their theories into practice and 
dividing up the plant among the community. How- 
ever, it didn't signify, because while we were making 
up our plans, on the boat, and trying to figure out 
how much of the original wreckage would come in 
again, one of the local enthusiasts felt he couldn't 
wait any longer for the Millennium and flung an 
armful of hand grenades through the shattered win- 
dows of the power house. We could imagine what 
happened among those dynamos and turbine cases. 
Mr. Lower-Bunk on the other side doesn't say 



142 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

much except that he'd been mine-sweeping. He 
says very Httle all the way to Malta. Sweepers 
very rarely have much to say. They have a habit 
of quiet reticence, engendered by the curious life 
they lead, a Hfe balanced on the very knife-edge of 
disaster. They generally get gray over the ears and 
their movements are dehberate and cautious, after 
the manner of men who dwell in the presence of high 
explosives. It occurs to me suddenly that these 
men are all about to vanish, to disappear from 
public view, and we shall have no record of their 
spiritual adventures during the last few years. In a 
month or so at most they will have doffed their naval 
uniforms and (much to their relief) put on civilian 
garb once more. I say we shall have no record of 
their spiritual adventures. We have tales of their 
doings as heroes, no doubt; but that is not the same 
thing. I suppose, if the truth be told, a good many 
of them had no adventures of this description. A 
surgeon with whom I sailed, a dry satirical person of 
exceptional mental powers, once enunciated to me a 
particularly brutal theory to account for this gap in 
our literature. Just as, he asserted, just as below a 
certain stage in the animal kingdom the nervous 
system becomes so rudimentary and mechanical 
that pain as we know it is non-existent, so, below 
a certain social level in civilized life the emotions are 
largely an instinctive response to unconscious stimuli 
applied to actual cases. 



THE SHINING HOUR 143 

This mine-sweeping Lieutenant of Reserve for 
example, who Hves in a diminutive brick subdivision 
of a long edifice in a long road a long way out of 
Cardiff, and who enjoys having his tea in the kitchen 
with his coat off and the cat on his knee, according 
to my surgical friend, is unable to comprehend within 
himself the emotions inspired by the fine arts, by great 
literature, or by great beauty. Now this seemed to 
me unfair, and I adduced as an argument the fact 
that these people often appreciated fine literature. 
Nothing could have been more unfortunate! I had 
dehvered myself into his hands. He simply asked 
me how I knew. By what method of calibration 
were we to gauge the ability of these people to 
appreciate anything of the sort.? Did I ever hear 
these people talking about books, or art, or beauty ? I 
was silent, and he went on as though he enjoyed it. 
Reading, he informed me, was no evidence whatever. 
Reading the written characters in a printed book 
implied no comprehension of the moods inspiring the 
book. Universal education had taught these people 
to go through the various external mental processes 
and no doubt the words did convey some rough-and- 
ready meaning to their minds, just as a monkey who 
has been taught to ride a bicycle had some sort of 
crude conception of momentum and equihbrium. 
But as for actually entering into the full intention of 
the artist, why, look at the books they generally 
read, look at the pictures they preferred, look (and 



144 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

here I got up and walked away) at the women they 
married! 

I mention this surgeon because I met him again 
in Malta. After four days of ceaseless and intoler- 
able rolling, pitching, and shaking, during which 
I calculated, Trollope would have written a novel 
and a half, but which added not a word to my article, 
we raised Malta, and passing under the great guns 
of the fortifications, anchored in the Grand Harbour 
of Valletta. And I met him in the Strada Reale. 
Sooner or later one meets every man one has ever 
sailed with in the Strada Reale. The paymaster 
who was so rude to you about an advance of pay 
in Scapa Flow, the airman who cleaned you out at 
poker at Saloniki, the engineer who tried to borrow 
from you in Bizerta, the senior naval officer who 
refused you leave in Suez — you will encounter them 
all sooner or later in the Strada Reale. And after 
I had deposited my baggage in one of the vaulted 
chambers which pass for bedrooms within the enor- 
mous walls of the Angleterre, on the Strada St. 
Lucia, we adjourned to the great square in front of 
the Libreria and sat at a little table. 

And the thought that comes to me as we sit at 
the little table — just out of the stream of cheerful 
people who pour up and down the Strada Reale and 
seem to have no other occupation, and in the shadow 
of the great honey-coloured walls of the Governor's 
Palace — is that the Surgeon will not only prevent 



THE SHINING HOUR 145 

my getting on with my article but will probably 
adduce half a dozen excellent reasons why it should 
not be written. He has a thin chilly smile which 
is amusing enough in the ward room but which acts 
like a blight upon one's inspiration. He is not 
satisfied with proving that everything has been done. 
He goes on to show conclusively that it wasn't 
worth doing, anyway. The tender shoots of fancy, 
the delicate flowers of thought, perish in the icy wind 
of his mentality. The fact is, it is not necessary 
for him to confess that he has never written a line, 
couldn't write a line, and never intends to write a 
line. It sticks out all over. He lacks that naivete, 
that soft spot in his brain, that shy simphcity, which 
brackets the artist with the tramp, the child, and 
the village idiot. He is "all there" as we say, and 
one must not be afraid to confess that an artist is 
very rarely "all there." I do not ofFer this expla- 
nation to him, of course. His enjoyment of it would 
be too offensive. And when I tell him of my mis- 
givings about TroUope, the smile irradiates his thin 
intellectual features. He fails to see why a man 
shouldn't work at writing precisely the same as he 
works at anything else. "If he's to get anything 
done," he adds. 

"But don't you see," I argue weakly, "the artist 
isn't particularly keen on getting a thing done, 
as you call it? He gets his pleasure out of doing 
it, playing with it, fooling with it, if you Hke. The 



146 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

mere completion of it is an incident. Can't you 
see: 

But he couldn't. These efficient people never 
can see a thing like that. They mutter "amateur," 
and light a fresh cigar. They are like first-class 
passengers on a liner — bright, well-dressed, well- 
mannered, and accomphshed people, being carried, 
they know not how, across a dark and mysterious 
world of heaving waters. They can explain every- 
thing without knowing much about anything. They 
are the idle rich of the intellectual world. They 

"What did you say was the title of that article 
you were going to write?" asked the Surgeon. 

"Well," I said slowly, "I was going to call it 
*The Shining Hour,' but I don't know if after 
all. ..." 

"Well, why don't you get on with it then?" he 
inquired, and he snickered. "It sounds all right," 
he added, and finished his Italian vermouth. "Have 
another. It may give you an idea!" 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 

The cruiser, coming to anchor with a sudden rattle 
of cable and grind of rapidly revolving wheels, found 
us ready to disembark. Leaving our baggage in 
heaps upon scuttles and gratings, we poured down 
the gangway and tumbled into the competing 
dinghies which swarmed about us. In this evolution 
there was to be observed no trace of the traditional 
eagerness of sentimental travellers to meet the first 
authentic impact of a place. The formularies of 
clearing from the ship's mess, the disentanglement 
of baggage, and the mollification of ward-room ratings 
had engrossed our faculties during arrival. Even 
as the boat approached the high flat platform of the 
Customs Quay, and the immediate noises and odours 
of the Harbour Side assailed us, we remained pre- 
occupied with the exigencies of our naval obligations. 
We saw, that is to say, nothing. We moved hur- 
medly across the Quay, climbed into diminutive 
carriages and were driven, with much cracking of 
whips and display of Latin temperament, up into the 
town, like so many prisoners. . . . 



147 



148 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

And he came out of the Strada Mezzodi running, 
shoulders back, gloves and cane held bosom-high 
in his clenched fists, like an athlete's corks, the whole 
body of the man pulsing and glowing from the ascent 
of that precipitous slot. Came out into the Strada 
Reale and brought up against me with a squashing 
thump that left us limp and uncertain of the future. 

He took ofF his cap and mopped his swiftly sloping 
forehead with the heel of his hand, an original and 
unforgettable gesture. There he was, unchanged 
and unchangeable, a knotty sliver of England, 
exactly the same, save for the Naval Reserve Uni- 
torm, as when, some nine years before, I had seen 
him barging his way into the shipping office in North 
Shields to sign off articles, for he was going away 
home to Newcastle to get married. There he was, 
ready-witted as ever, for he demanded with incredi- 
ble rapidity of utterance what the hell I thought I was 
doing, and recognized me even as he asked. He was, 
for all his doe-skin uniform and characteristically 
shabby lace and gloves, the same scornful, black 
browed, hook-nosed truculent personality. Small, 
yet filling the picture like bigger men by reason of 
his plunging restlessness, his disconcerting circum- 
locution of body, he vibrated before me even now an 
incarnate figure of interrogation. He found breath 
and voice, and shook my hand in a limp lifeless fash- 
ion that conveyed an uncanny impression of it being 
his first timorous experiment in handshaking — an- 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 149 

other peculiar and paradoxical by-product of his 
personality. He turned me round and propelled 
me back along the Strada Reale. He said the man 
I wanted to see at the Base Office was away playing 
polo and I could see him in the morning. He asked 
where my baggage was, and when I told him he said 
the Regina was the worst hotel in town and there was 
a room vacant next to his in the Angleterre. He 
turned me suddenly into the entrance hall of a vast 
structure of stone where in the cool darkness dimin- 
ished humans sat in tiny chairs and read the news- 
telegrams at microscopic notice-boards. An ornate 
inscription informed me that this place had been the 
Auberge of the Knights of the Tongue of Provence, 
but he said it was the Union Club. He examined 
a row of pigeon-holes and took out some letters. 
We sallied forth into the afternoon sunlight again 
and he hurried me along toward the Piazza de 
San Giorgio. A captain and two commanders passed 
and I saluted, but my companion spun round a 
corner into the declivity called the Strada San 
Lucia, and muttered that his salutes were all over 
and done with. Scandalized, yet suspecting in my 
unregenerate heart that here lay a tale that might 
be told in the twilight, I made no reply. Another 
turn into the fitly-named Strada Stretta, no more 
than a congregation of stone staircases largely 
monopolized by children, and goats with colossal 
udders and jingUng bells, and we hurtled into the 



I50 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

archway of an enormous mediaeval building whose I 
iron gate shut upon us with a clang like a new-oiled 
postern. 

And as we ascended the winding stone stairs there 
came down to us a medley of persons and impressions. 
There were far gongs and musical cries pierced with a 
thin continuous whine. There was a piratical crea- 
ture with fierce eyes and an alarming shock of up- 
standing black hair, who wielded a mop and stared 
with voracious curiosity. There came bounding 
down upon us a boy of eleven or so, with brown hair, 
a freckled nose, and beautiful gray eyes. There 
descended a buxom woman of thirty, modest and 
capable to the eye, yet with a sort of tarnish of sor- 
rowful experience in her demeanour. And behind 
her, walking abreast and in step, three astounding ap- 
paritions, Russian guardsmen, in complete regaha, 
blue and purple and bright gold so fabulous that one 
stumbled and grew afraid. Mincingly they de- 
scended, in step, their close-shaven polls glistening, 
their small eyes and thin, long legs giving them the 
air of something dreamed, bizarre adumbrations of an 
order gone down in ruin and secret butchery to a 
strangled silence. 

A high, deep, narrow gothic doorway on a landing 
stood open and we edged through. 

I had many questions to ask. I was reasonably 
entitled to know, for example, the charges for these 
baronial halls and gigantic refectories. I had a legi- 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 151 

timate curiosity concerning the superb beings who 
dwelt, no doubt, in mediaeval throne-rooms in dis- 
tant wings of the chateau. And above all I was 
wishful to learn the recent history of Mr. Eustace 
Heatly, sometime second engineer of the old S. S. 
Dolores, late engineer-lieutenant, and now before my 
eyes tearing oflF his coat and vest and pants, and 
bent double over a long black coffin-like steel chest 
whence he drew a suit of undeniable tweeds. But 
it was only when he had abolished the last remaining 
trace of naval garniture by substituting a cerise pop- 
lin cravat for the black affair worn in memory of the 
late Lord Nelson, and a pair of brown brogues for the 
puritanical mess boots of recent years, that Heatly 
turned to where I sat on the bed and looked search- 
ingly at me from under his high-arched, semicircular 
black eyebrows. 

He was extraordinarily unlike a naval officer now. 
Indeed, he was unlike the accepted Englishman. 
He had one of those perplexing personalities which 
are as indigenous to England as the Pennine Range 
and the Yorkshire Wolds, as authentic as Stone- 
henge; yet by virtue of their very perplexity have a 
difficulty in getting into literature. There was 
nothing of the tall blond silent Englishman about 
this man at all. Yet there was probably no mingling 
of foreign blood in him since Phoenician times — 
he was entirely and utterly English. He can be 
found in no other land and yet is to be found in all 



152 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

lands, generally with a concession from the govern- 
ment and a turbulent band of assistants. His 
sloping simian forehead was growing bald, and it 
gleamed as he came over to where I sat. His jaws, 
blue from the razor creased as he drew back his chin 
and began his inevitable movement of the shoulders 
which preluded speech. He was EngHsh, and he 
was on the point of proving his racial affinity be- 
yond all cavil. 

'^But why get yourself demobilized out here.?" I 
demanded, when he had explained. **Is there a job 
to be had?" 

"Job!" he echoed, eyebrows raised as he looked 
over his shoulder with apparent animosity. "Job! 
There s 2i fortune out here! See this?" He dived 
over the bed to where lay his uniform and extracted 
from the breast-pocket a folded sheet of gray paper. 
Inside was a large roughly pencilled tracing of the 
eastern Mediterranean. There was practically no 
nomenclature. An empty Italy kicked at an equally 
vacuous Sicily. Red blobs marked ports. The 
seas were spattered with figures, as in a chart, mark- 
ing soundings. And laid out in straggling Hnes like 
radiating constellations, were green and yellow and 
violet crosses. From Genoa to Marseilles, from 
Marseilles to Oran, from Port Said and Alexandria 
to Cape Bon, from Saloniki to Taranto, these poly- 
chromatic clusters looped and clotted in the sea-lanes, 
until the eye, roving at last toward the intricate con- 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 153 

figuration of the Cyclades, caught sight of the Sea of 
Marmora, where the green symbols formed a closely 
woven texture. 

** Where did you get this?" I asked, amazed, 
and Heatly smoothed the crackling paper as it lay 
between us on the bed. His shoulders worked and 
his chin drew back, as though he were about to spring 
upon me. 

'^That's telling," he grunted. "The point is: do 
you want to come in on this? These green ones 
y'understand, are soft things, in less'n ten fathom. 
The yellows are deeper. The others are too big or 
too deep for us." 

"Who's us?" I asked, beginning to feel an interest 
beyond his own personality. He began to fold up 
the chart, which had no doubt come by unfrequented 
ways from official dossiers, 

"There's the Skipper and the Mate and meself," 
he informed me, "but we can do with another en- 
gineer. Come in with us!" he ejaculated "It's 
the chance of a lifetime. You put up five hundred, 
and it's share and share alike." 

I had to explain, of course, that what he suggested 
was quite impossible. I was not demobilized. I 
had to join a ship in dock-yard hands. Moreover, 
I had no five hundred to put up. He did not press 
the point. It seemed to me that he had simply been 
the temporary vehicle of an obscure wave of senti- 
ment. We had been shipmates in the old days. He 



154 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

had never been a friend of mine, it must be under- 
stood. We had wrangled and snarled at each other 
over hot and dirty work, we had gone our separate 
ways ashore, and he had rushed from the shipping 
office that day in Shields and never even said good- 
bye ere he caught the train to Newcastle and matri- 
mony. Yet here now, after nine years, he abruptly 
offered me a fortune! The slow inexorable passage 
of time had worn away the ephemeral scoria of our 
relations and laid bare an unexpected vein of durable 
esteem. Even now, as I say, he did not press the 
point. He was loth to admit any emotion beyond a 
gruff solicitude for my financial aggrandisement. 
And while we were bickering amiably on these lines 
the high narrow door opened and the buxom woman 
appeared with a tea-tray. She smiled and went over 
to the embrasured window where there stood a table. 
As she stood there, in her neat black dress and white 
apron, her dark hair drawn in smooth convolutions 
about her placid brows, her eyes declined upon the 
apparatus on the tray, she had the air of demure so- 
phistication and sainted worldliness to be found in 
lady prioresses and mother superiors when dealing 
with secular aliens. She was an intriguing anomaly 
in this stronghold of ancient and militant celibates. 
The glamour of her individual illusion survived even 
the introduction that followed. 

[ **This is Emma," said Heatly as though indicating 
a natural but amusing feature of the landscape. 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 155 

"Emma, an old shipmate o' mine. Let him have 
that room next to this. Anybody been ? " 

"Yes," said Emma in a soft, gentle voice. "Cap- 
tain Gosnell rang up. He wants to see you at the 
usual place." 

"Then I'll be going," said Heatly, drinking tea 
standing, a trick abhorred to those who regard teas 
as something of a ritual. "Lay for four at our 
table to-night and send to the Regina for my friend's 
gear. And mind, no games!" And he placed his 
arm about her waist. Seizing a rakish-looking deer- 
stalker, he made for the door and then halted 
abruptly, looking back upon us with apparent ma- 
levolence. Emma smiled without resigning her pose 
of sorrowful experience, and the late engineer- 
lieutenant slipped through the door and was gone. 

So there were to be no games. I looked at Emma 
and stepped over to help myself to tea. There 
were to be no games. Comely as she was, there was 
no more likelihood of selecting the cloistral Emma for 
trivial gallantry than of pulling the Admiral's nose. 
I had other designs on Emma. I had noted the 
relations of those two with attention and it was 
patent to me that Emma would tell me a good deal 
more about Heatly than Heatly knew about himself. 
Heatly was that sort of man. He would be a prob- 
lem of enigmatic opacity to men, and a crystal-clear 
solution to the cool, disillusioned matron. 

And Emma told. Women are not only implacable 



156 HARBOURS OF MEMORY, 

realists, they are unconscious artists. They dwell 
always in the Palace of Unpalatable Truth and never 
by any chance is there a magic talisman to save 
them from their destiny. Speech is their ultimate 
need. We exist for them only in so far as we can be 
described. As the incarnate travesties of a mysti- 
cal ideal we inspire ecstasies of romantic supposition. 
There is a rapt expression on the features of a woman 
telling about a man. Duty and pleasure melt into 
one suffusing emotion and earth holds for her no 
holier achievement. 

And so, as the reader is ready enough to believe, 
there were no games. Apart from her common ur- 
bane humanity, Emma's lot in life, as the deserted 
wife of a Highland sergeant lacking in emotional 
stability, had endowed her with the smooth effi- 
ciency of a character in a novel. She credited me 
with a complete inventory of normal virtues and 
experiences and proceeded to increase my knowledge 
of life. 

And the point of her story, as I gathered, was this. 
My friend Heatly, in the course of the years, had 
completed the cycle of existence without in any de- 
gree losing the interest of women. I knew he was 
married. Emma informed me that they had seven 
children. The youngest had been born six months 
before. Where? Why in the house in Gateshead 
of course. Did I know Gateshead .? 

I did. As I sat in that embrasured window and 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 157 

looked down the thin deep sHt of the Strada Lucia, 
past green and saffron balconies and jutting shrines, 
to where the Harbour of Marsamuscetta showed a 
patch of soHd dark blue below the distant perfection 
of Sliema, I thought of Gateshead, with the piercing 
East Coast wind ravening along its gray dirty streets, 
with its frowsy fringe of coal-staiths standing black 
and stark above the icy river, and I heard the grind 
and yammer of the grimy street-cars striving to 
drown the harsh boom and crash from the great 
yards at Elswick on the far bank. I saw myself 
again hurrying along in the rain, a tired young man 
in overalls, making hurried purchases of gear and 
tobacco and rough gray blankets, for the ship sailed 
on the turn of the tide. And I found it easy to 
see the small two-story house half way down one of 
those incredibly ignoble streets, the rain, driven by 
the cruel wind, whipping against sidewalk and win- 
dow, the front garden a mere puddle of mud, and 
indoors a harassed dogged woman fighting her way 
to the day's end while a horde of robust children 
romped and gorged and blubbered around her. 

"Seven,'' I murmured, and the bells of a herd of 
goats made a musical commotion in the street be- 
low. 

"Seven," said Emma, refilHng my cup. 

"And he's not going home yet, even though he 
has got out of the Navy," I observed with tactful 
abstraction. 



158 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

"That's just it," said Emma, "not going home. 
He's gone into this salvage business you see. I be- 
lieve it's a very good thing." 

"Of course his wife gets her half pay," I mused. 

"She gets all his pay,'' accented Emma. "He 
sends it all. He has other ways . . . you un- 
derstand. Resources. But he won't go home. 
You know, there's somebody here." 

So here we were coming to it. It had been dawn- 
ing on me, as I stared down at the blue of the Mar- 
samuscetta, that possibly Heatly's interest for 
Emma had been heightened by the fact that he was 
a widower. Nothing so crude as that, however. 
Something much more interesting to the high gods. 
Between maturity and second childhood, if events 
are propitious, men come to a period of augmented 
curiosity fortified by a vague sense of duties accom- 
plished. They acquire a conviction that beyond the 
comfortable and humdrum vales of domestic felicity, 
where they have lived so long, there He peaks of 
ecstasy and mountain ranges of perilous dalliance. 
I roused suddenly. 

"But now he's out of the Navy," I remarked. 

"You mustn't think that," said Emma. "He 
isn't that sort of man. I tell you, she's all right." 

"Who.*^ The somebody who's here.^" 

"No, his wife's all right as far as money goes. 
But there's no sympathy between them. A man 
can't go on all his life without sympathy." 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 159 

"What is she like?" I asked. 

"Oh Vm not defending him," said Emma, with 
her eyes fixed on the sugar-bowl. "Goodness knows 
/Ve no reason to think well of men, and you're all 

alike. Only, he's throwing himself away on a 

Well, never mind. You'll see her. Here's your 
room. You can have this connecting door open if 
you like." 

"Fine," I said, looking round and then walking 
into a sort of vast and comfortable crypt. The 
walls, five feet thick, were pierced on opposite sides 
as for cannon, and one looked instinctively for the 
inscriptions by prisoners and ribald witticisms by 
sentries. There was the Strada Lucia again, beyond 
a delicious green railing; and behind was another 
recess, from whose shuttered aperture one beheld the 
hotel courtyard with a giant tree swelling up and 
almost touching the yellow walls. I looked at the 
groined roof, the distant white-curtained bed, the 
cupboards of blackwood, the tiled floor with its old 
worn mats. I looked out of the window into the 
street and was startled by an unexpectedly near view 
of a saint in a blue niche by the window, a saint with 
a long sneering nose and a supercihous expression as 
she decHned her stony eyes upon the Strada Lucia. 
I looked across the Strada Lucia and saw dark eyes 
and disdainful features at magic casements. And I 
told Emma that I would take the apartment. 

"You'll find Mr. Heatly in the Cafe de la Reine," 



i6o HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

she remarked gently, '*he's there with Captain Gos- 
nell." 

But I did not want to see either Heatly or Cap- 
tain Gosnell just yet. I said I would be back to 
dinner, and took my cap and cane. 

The Strada Reale was full. The Strada Reale is al- 
ways full. It is the one street within the walls of 
the city where one may promenade. It becomes 
a ritual, walking up and down the Strada Reale. 
Or rather it becomes a narcotic. One's individuality 
becomes blurred. One evolves into a uniformed 
automaton, nervously alert as to perambulating 
ranks and ratings, noting with uncanny precision 
the correctness of one man's sleeve-lace or the set of 
another's wing-collar. This sort of morbid preoccu- 
pation with harness and trappings is inevitable 
among a host of young men not entirely certain of 
their social status or of their right to the title of gen- 
tility. One can figure, easily enough, how this self- 
consciousness must have worked among the young 
blades who came to Malta and dwelt in the monas- 
teries of their orders. Trig young Proven9als and 
Bavarians, truculent Aragonese and close-lipped 
Yorkshiremen, watching each other's points and 
accoutrements as they clanked up and down Strada 
Reale of an evening. So with us; and the busy scene, 
the officers and men, singly and groups; the pros- 
perous citizens at the doors of their bright Httle 
stores; the stray Maltese girl hurrying along in that 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS i6i 

enigmatic head-dress of hers; the inevitable thin Eng- 
Hsh lady with a book from the Garrison Library; the 
party of Japanese naval officers with their set and 
eternal smile; the crush of bluejackets surging up and 
deploying hastily to one side into taverns with names 
inherited from Nelson's day; the sun setting in lusty 
splendour beyond the great carved gateway at the 
upper end — all this may be taken for granted by the 
reader as we pass by subtler ways to the ramp 
leading up to the Lower Barracca. Here, sitting in 
the little circular garden above the bastions, we look 
down on the world. 

It was up here, smoking in solitary comfort and 
looking out toward Senglea and beyond, where 
towns and villages dotted the great golden plain, 
that I got hold of the notion that this divagation 
of Heatly was his peculiarly English way of respond- 
ing to the invading beauty of his environment. I 
began to suspect the avowed spiritual motives of 
those old knights and turcopoliers who steadfastly re- 
fused to return to their native lands, who remained 
within the order, or who set forth on fantastic quests 
in the domains of the Paynims. I could perceive, 
looking down at the cobalt sea, the honey-coloured 
promontories, the severe line of columned porticoes 
of the Bighi Hospital, and the romantic riot of clear 
colours in roofs and walls, that a reaction from a 
dour north-country asceticism might be conceded. 
I suspected that this revulsion, suddenly precipitated 



i62 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

in a man's heart by a celibate existence in scenes of 
sun-ripened loveliness, might account for many 
strange episodes in history. Emma, full of sorrow- 
ful experience, yet brooding over a man as though he 
were a child of her own, was another manifestation 
of nature's compensating contrivance. A sudden 
curiosity assailed me. What if my theory were true, 
that the exquisite beauty of this honey-coloured 
island of the sea had some sort of radio-activity, as it 
were, driving men to noble deeds of high endeavour 
and women to greater charity? And walking down 
again in the dusk, while the city and the harbour 
decked themselves out in necklaces and girdles and 
tiaras of many-coloured jewels, I realized that Heatly, 
in cold fact, was doubtful material out of which to 
fashion a hero. This brought on a struggle, between 
heredity and environment as it were. It was neces- 
sary to recall, with an effort, the house at Gateshead, 
the seven children, and the tired woman toiling all 
day and far into the night. With the war won and 
the country saved from invading hordes, her hus- 
band deserts her. Once in the town again, however, 
and climbing toward the Piazza San Giorgio, it no 
longer required an effort to concentrate upon the 
deserted wife. A hasty retrospect confirmed the 
suspicion that wives invariably flourish when de- 
serted; that it is the deserting male, the reckless 
idealist rushing about the world seeking a non- 
existent felicity, who often ends in disaster. That 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 163 

— and this came to mind as the Libreria was reached, 
and I searched under the arches for a view of 
Heatly — that the wives who are not deserted, but 
who have to feed and clothe and comfort and scold 
and advise, are the true objects of commiseration; 
wives whose existence is given over to a ceaseless 
vigil of cantankerous affection. And then I saw 
Heatly and the suspicion was confirmed. 

He was seated at a table with two other men, in 
the shadow of one of the great columns. Just be- 
hind him a young Maltese kneeled by a great long- 
haired goat, which he was milking swiftly into a 
glass for a near-by customer. Heatly, however, 
was not drinking milk. He was talking. There 
were three of them and their heads were together 
over the drinks on the little marble table. They 
were so absorbed that I sat down to watch them 
from a distance. 

Through the corridor of the arcades poured a 
stream of promenaders from the side alleys and 
augmented each moment by groups from the Strada 
Reale. The great bells of the Cathedral began to 
boom, and a military band in front of the Garrison 
was playing a march that came to us in vague shrill 
whimpers and deadened thumps on a drum. A flock 
of goats filed by, tinkling their bells with an air of 
absurd vanity. Beggars materialized in a dis- 
concerting manner from nowhere, and remained 
motionless with extended palms. Waiters, holding 



i64 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

aloft trays in miraculous equilibrium, glided among 
the crowded tables in the square or shot at express 
speed into the cafe. A party of priests sat just 
within the door, emblems of respectable conviviality. 
Families grew modestly riotous over their grenadine 
and cakes, and children ran shrieking into the 
Square to play touch or foUow-my-leader round the 
statue of Queen Victoria. 

All this was going on and the three men at the 
little marble table took no notice at all. As I watched 
them, the man next to Heatly, whom I guessed to be 
Captain Gosnell, turned his head and stared round 
vacantly at the scene. Yet it was evident he had in 
no way retired from the intense intimacy of the con- 
versation, for he immediately looked sharply at the 
others and nodded. There was about these men 
an aura of supreme happiness. As they regarded 
each other their eyeballs took on the benevolent 
and preoccupied opacity of sculptured bronze. For 
all their easy civilian garb they conveyed the im- 
pression of a gathering of proconsuls or knight- 
commanders of outlying protectorates. In the 
light of a match-flare, as they lit fresh cigarettes, 
their features showed up harsh and masculine, the 
faces of men who dealt neither in ideas nor in emo- 
tions, but in prejudices and instincts and desires. 
They were entirely of the world in which they lived. 
Between them and reality there came no troubling 
thoughts, no fantastic dreams of art, philosophy. 



tig I 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 165 

or religion. That is why, one suspects, they con- 
veyed the impression of truculent and exclusive 
happiness. For them the gay scene, the dignified 
and frumpish statue of royalty, the enormous wall 
of the Governor's Palace with its sculptured and 
variegated corbels, the peremptory strains of the 
military band, the delicate sky with its faint yet 
brilliant stars, were all merely accessories to their 
personal well-being. Into this galaxy of acceptable 
facts I was abruptly initiated, for Heatly turned and 
saw me, and further contemplation was out of the 
question. 



And of that evening and the tale they told me, 
there is no record by the alert psychologist. There 
is a roseate glamour over a confusion of memories. 
There are recollections of exalted emotions and un- 
paralleled eloquence. We traversed vast distances 
and returned safely, arm in arm. We were the gen- 
erals of famous campaigns, the heroes of colossal 
achievements and the conquerors of proud and beau- 
tiful women. From the swaying platforms of the 
Fourth Dimension we caught glimpses of starry 
destinies. We stood on the shoulders of the lesser 
gods to see our enemies confounded. And out of 
the mist and fume of the evening emerged a shadowy 
legend of the sea. 

By a legerdemain which seemed timely and agree- 



1 66 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

ably inexplicable the marble table under the arcade 
of the Libreria became a linen-covered table in an 
immense and lofty chamber. We were at dinner. 
The ceiling was gilded framework of panelled paint- 
ings. Looking down upon us from afar were well- 
fed anchorites and buxom saints. Their faces 
gleamed from out of a dark polished obscurity and 
their ivory arms emerged from the convolutions of 
ruby and turquoise velvet draperies. Tall cande- 
labra supported coloured globes which shed a mellow 
radiance upon the glitter of silver and crystal. There 
was a sound of music which rose and fell as some 
distant door swung to and fro; the air still trembled 
with the pulsing reverberations of a great gong; and 
a thin whine, which was the food-elevator ascending 
in dry grooves from the kitchen, seemed to spur 
the fleet-footed waiters to a frenzy of service. High 
cabinets of darkwood stood between tall, narrow 
windows, housing collections of sumptuous plates 
and gilded wares. On side tables heaps of bread 
and fruit made great masses of solid colour, of 
gamboge, saffron, and tawny orange. Long-necked 
bottles appeared reclining luxuriously in wicker 
cradles, like philosophic pagans about to bleed to 
death. At a table by the distant door sits the little 
boy with the freckled nose and beautiful gray eyes. 
He writes in a large book as the waiters pause on 
tip-toe, dishes held as though in votive offering to a 
red Chinese dragon on the mantel above the boy's 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 167 

head. He writes, and looking out down the entrance 
suddenly laughs in glee. From the corridor come 
whoops and a staccato cackle of laughter followed 
by a portentous roll of thunder from the great gong. 
The boy puts his hand over his mouth in his ecstasy, 
the waiters grin as they hasten, the head waiter 
moves over from the windows thinking seriously, 
and one has a vision of Emma, mildly distraught, at 
the door. Captain Gosnell, holding up the corner of 
his serviette, remarks that they are coming, and 
studies the w4ne-list. 

They rush in, and a monocled major at a near-by 
table pauses, fork in air over his fried sea-trout, and 
glares. In the forefront of the bizarre procession 
comes Heatly, with a Russian guardsman on his back. 
The other two guardsmen follow, dancing a stately 
measure, revolving with rhythmic gravity. Behind, 
waltzing alone, is Mr. Marks, the mate. Instantly, 
however, the play is over. They break away, the 
guardsman sHps to the floor, and they all assume a 
demeanour of impenetrable reserve as they walk 
decorously toward us. They sit, and become 
merged in the collective mood of the chamber. Yet 
one has a distinct impression of a sudden glimpse 
into another world — as though the thin yet durable 
membrane of existence had split open a little, and 
one saw, for a single moment, men as they really are. 

And while I am preoccupied with this fancy, 
which is mysteriously collated in the mind with a 



i68 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

salmis of quails, Captain Gosnell becomes articulate. 
He is explaining something to me. It is time Cap- 
tain Gosnell should be described. He sits on my 
left, a portly powerful man with a large red nose 
and great baggy pouches under his stern eyes. It 
is he who tells the story. I watch him as he dissects 
his quail. Of his own volition he tells me he has 
twice swallowed the anchor. And here he is, still 
on the job. Did he say twice .^ Three times count- 
ing ; well, it was this way. First of all, an aunt 

left him a little money and he quit a second mate's 
job to start a small provision store. Failed. . Had 
to go to sea again. Then he married. Wife had 
a little money, so they started again. Prospered. 
Two stores, both doing well. Two counters, I am 
to understand. Canned goods, wines, and spirits 
on one side; meats and so forth on the other. High- 
class cHentele. Wonderful head for business, Mrs. 
Gosnell's. He himself, understand, not so dusty. 
Had a way with customers. Could sell pork in a 
synagogue, as the saying is. And then Mrs. Gosnell 
died. Great shock to him, of course, and took all 
the heart out of him. Buried her and went back to 
sea. She was insured, and later, with what little 
money he had, started an agency for carpet-sweeping 
machinery. Found it difficult to get on with his 
captain you see, being a senior man in a junior billet. 
As I very likely am aware, standing rigging makes 
poor running gear. Was doing a very decent little 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 169 

business too, when — the war. So he went into the 
Naval Reserve. That's how it all came about. 
Now, his idea is to go back, with the experience he 
has gained, and start a store again. Merchandising 
in his opinion, is the thing of the future. With a 
little money, the thing can be done. Well! 

It is difficult to see the exact bearing all this auto- 
biography has upon the officers at the next table. 
Never mind. Listen. Captain Gosnell repeats his 
statement that he entered the Naval Reserve. 
Well. Don't forget the war had done for his little 
business. His own personality was the principal 
good-will in that. And now the war was over, what 
was there in it for him? Second Mate's billet! No 
fear! Not again. However! So he got finally 
into the mine-laying. No particular picnic for a 
man his age, you understand, but it had to be done 
by responsible people or they would never get the 
eggs laid. That was his expression, which seemed to 
me, in the light of his revelations, to deserve a smile. 
Er, well, yes. From force of habit he used a phrase 
from the provision business. Could I imagine him 
with a white apron tied high up under his arm-pits? 
That was his idea. Everything white. White 
enamel, glazed tiles, one of those revolving cutter 
machines for ham, and a cash register finished in 
Sheraton or Chippendale — eh what? 

But it was necessary to have a little capital. Say 
five thousand. So here we were. 



I70 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

A bad attack of pneumonia with gastritis nearly 
finished him at Dover. Doctor said if he got away 
to a warmer cHmate it would make a new man of 
him. So a chat with a Surgeon-Commander in Lon- 
don resulted in him being appointed to a mine-layer 
bound for the eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps 
I had heard of her. The Ouzel. Side-wheeler built 
for the excursionists. Started away from Devonport 
and took her to Port Said. Imagine it! Think of 
her bouncing from one mountainous wave to another, 
off Finisterre. Think of her turning over and over, 
almost, going round St. Vincent. Fine little craft 
for all that. Heatly here was Chief. Marks here 
was Mate. It was a serious responsibility. 

At this Mr. Heatly interjects a bitter reflection 
upon the coupling bolts of the paddle-shaft. Snapped 
like carrots, one or two a day. And only a couple 
of flat-footed dockyard men to keep watches. Still, 
he snarled, they all helped. Gosnell here, up to his 
eyes in it, fetching and carrying, swinging the big 
hammer like a sportsman and doing exactly what 
he was told. 

Captain Gosnell, with his flushed severe features 
quite unmoved by this revelation of his efficiency, 
and his stern eyes fixed upon his roast partridge, 
proceeded with his story. 

And when they reached Port Said, they were 
immediately loaded with mines and sent straight 
out again to join the others who were laying a com- 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 171 

plicated barrage about fifty miles north. Four days 
out, one day in. It wasn't so bad at first, being one 
of a company, with constant signalling and visits in 
fine weather. But later, when the Ouzel floated 
alone in an immense blue circle of sea and sky, they 
began to get acquainted. This took the common 
English method of discovering, one by one, each 
other's weaknesses, and brooding over them in 
secret. What held them together most firmly ap- 
pears to have been a sort of sophisticated avoidance 
of women. Not in so many words. Captain Gosnell 
assures me, but taking it for granted, they found a 
common ground in *' Keeping in the fairway." 
Marks was a bachelor it is true, but Marks had no 
intention of being anything else. Marks had other 
fish to fry, I am to understand. 

I look at Marks, who sits opposite to me. He 
has a full round face, clean-shaved and flexible as 
an actor's. His rich brown hair, a thick soHd-look- 
ing auburn thatch, suddenly impresses me with its 
extreme incongruity. As I look at him he puts up 
his hand, pushes his hair slowly up over his forehead 
like a cap, revealing a pink scalp, rolls the whole 
contrivance from side to side and brings it back to 
its normal position. 

More for comfort than anything else. Captain 
Gosnell assures me, for nobody is deceived by a wig 
like that. What is a man to do when he has pretty 
near the whole top of his head blown off by a gas- 



172 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

ometer on the western front exploding? There's 
Marks, minus his hair and everything else, pretty 
well, buried in a pit of loose cinders. Lamp-post 
blown over, lying across him. Marks lay quiet 
enough, thinking. He wasn't dead, he could breathe, 
and one hand moved easily in the cinders. Began 
to paddle with that hand. Went on thinking and 
paddHng. Soon he could move the other hand. 
Head knocking against the lamp-post, he paddled 
downward. Found he was moving slowly forward. 
Head clear of the lamp-post. Gritty work, swim- 
ing, as it were, in loose ashes. Hands in shocking 
condition. Scalp painful. Lost his hair but kept 
his head. Suddenly his industriously paddling 
hands swirled into the air, jerking legs drove him 
upward, and he spewed the abrasive element from 
his lips. He had come back. And had brought an 
idea with him. Before he went into the Army, 
Marks was second officer in the Marchioness Line, 
afflicted with dreams of inventing unsinkable ships 
and collapsible lifeboats. Now he came back to 
life with a brand new notion. What was it? Well, 
we'd be having a run over to the ship by and bye 
and I would see it. It could do everything except 
sing a comic song. 

"And now I'm going to tell you," said Captain 
Gosnell, pushing away the Glace Napolitaine and 
selecting several stalks of celery to eat with his 
cheese. Quite apart from the mellowing process 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 173 

which has been going on since five o'clock, Captain 
Gosnell is fully equipped for telling anything. He 
has the gift of recounting experiences, real and 
imaginary, which is quite a different thing from 
eloquence or rhetorical power. His mentality is of 
that objective type which is entirely unaware of 
self-consciousness. He is alive at all times to the 
fantastic whimsies which are for ever playing across 
the minds of coarse, common men. He perceives 
the humour of the situation, the intrinsic value of the 
adventure as he tells it. 

**We had been reheved one evening," he observes, 
"and were about hull down and under when I ordered 
'Dead slow' for a few hours. The reason for this was 
that at full speed we would reach Port Said about 
three in the afternoon, and it was generally ad- 
vised to arrive after sunset or even after dark. I 
set a course to pass round to the eastward of a field 
we had laid a week or so before, instead of to the 
westward. This is a simple enough matter of run- 
ning off the correct distance, for the current, if any- 
thing, increased the margin of safety. We were 
making about four knots, with the mine-field on the 
starboard bow, as I calculated, and we were enjoying 
a very pleasant supper in my cabin, which had been 
the passenger saloon in the Ouzel's excursion days, 
a fine large room on the upper deck with big windows, 
like a house ashore. The old bus was chugging 
along and from my table you could see the horizon 



174 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

all round except just astern which was hid by the 
funnel. Nothing there however but good salt water 
and the Holy Land a long way behind. It was like 
sitting in a conservatory. The sea was as smooth 
as glass, with a fine haze to the southward. This 
haze, as far as I could judge, was moving north at 
about the same speed as we were going south, which 
would make it eight knots, and in an hour we would 
be in it. I mention this because it explains why 
the three of us, sitting in a cabin on an upper deck, 
saw the battleship, all together, all at once, and quite 
near. We all went on the bridge. 

"Everybody else, apparently, saw her too. You 
couldn't very well help it. The guns were on her 
and our one signalman was standing by his halyards. 
The idea in everybody's head of course was the 
Goehen. The Goehen was a sort of nightmare in 
those days. Our mine-fields were partly designed 
to get the Goehen, Supposing she did come out, and 
supposing she had the luck to get past the Grecian 
Arches, she could pound Port Said to pieces and 
block the canal with sunk ships before anything big 
enough to hurt her could get within five hundred 
miles of us. And she could get away again, with 
her speed. The Goehen used to give our people 
a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, I can tell 
you. 

"But this wasn't the Goehen. That ship was as 
well-known to us as the Victory at Portsmouth or 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 175 

the London Monument. This thing coming straight 
out from Port Said was a vessel with three enormous 
funnels standing straight, huge masts like factory 
chimneys, with square fighting-tops. The haze 
magnified her, you understand, and to us in that 
wooden tub of an Ouzel, she seemed larger than any 
ship we had ever heard of. 

"Now you must understand," went on Captain 
Gosnell, "that the subject of conversation between 
us while we were at supper was money. We were 
discussing the best way of getting hold of money and 
the absolute necessity of capital after the war if we 
were to get an3rwhere. This war, you know, has 
been a three-ringed circus for the young fellows. 
But to men like us it hasn't been anything of the 
sort. We have a very strong conviction that some of 
us are going to feel the draft. We aren't so young as 
we used to be, and a little money would be a blessing. 
Well, we were talking about our chances; of salvage, 
prize-money, bonuses, and so forth. Our principal 
notion, if I remember that evening, was to go into 
business and pool our resources. For one thing, we 
wanted to keep up the association. And then out 
of the Lord knows where came this great gray war- 
ship heading straight " 

Captain Gosnell paused and regarded me with an 
austere glance. Mr. Marks and Heatly were listen- 
ing and looking at us watchfully. And over Mr. 
Marks's shoulder I could see the three officers with 



176 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

their polychromatic uniforms gleaming in the soft 
orange radiance of shaded lamps. One was leaning 
over and examining the contents of an ice-bucket 
beside him. Another, the green-and-gold one, was 
cracking walnuts. The third sat back, smiling, his 
gorgeously laced sleeve extended to where he twiddled 
a wine-glass. 

"You understand what I mean?" said Captain 
Gosnell, reaching for a cigarette. "Or perhaps you 
don't. We stood on the bridge watching that ship 
come up on us, watching her through our glasses, and 
we did not attach any particular importance to her 
appearance. A couple of shells from her eighteen- 
pounders would have sunk us. When we saw the 
Russian ensign astern it did not mean a great deal to 
us. She was as much an anomaly in those terrible 
waters as a hne-of-battle ship of Nelson's day. That 
was what staggered us. What use was she.^ An 
enormous, valuable ship like that coming out into 
such a sea. Suddenly the value of her, the money 
she cost, the money she was worth, so near and yet so 
far, came home to us. I had an imaginary view of 
her, you understand, for a moment as something I 
could sell; a sort of fanciful picture of her possibilities 
in the junk line. Think of the brass and rubber 
alone, in a ship like that! And then we all simul- 
taneously reahzed just what was happening. I 
think I had my hand stretched out to the whistle i 
lanyard when there was a heavy, bubbhng grunt, and 



1 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 177 

she rolled over toward us as though some invisible 
hand had given her a push. She rolled back to 
an even keel and began pitching a very little. This 
was due, I beheve, to the sudden going astern of her 
engines coupled with the mine throwing her over* 
Pitched a little, and for some extraordinary reason 
her forward twelve-inch guns were rapidly elevated 
as though some insane gunner was going to take a 
shot at the North Star before going down. From 
what we gathered, later, there were things going on 
inside that turret which are unpleasant to think 
about. I'll tell you. But first of all, there was that 
ship, twenty-five thousand tons of her, going through 
a number of peculiar evolutions. Like most battle- 
ships she had four anchors in her bows, and suddenly 
they all shot out their hawse-pipes and fell into the 
sea, while clouds of red dust came away, as though 
she was breathing fire and smoke at us through her 
nostrils. Very vivid impression we had of that. 
And then she began to swing round on them, so that 
as we came up to her she showed us her great rounded 
armoured counter with its captain's gallery and a little 
white awning to keep off the sun. And what we 
saw then passed anything in my experience on this 
earth, ashore or afloat. We were coming up on her, 
you know, and we had our glasses so that as the 
stern swung on us we had a perfectly close view of 
that gallery. There were two bearded men sitting 
there in uniforms covered with gold lace and danghng 



178 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

decorations, smoking cigarettes, each in a large 
wicker chair on either side of a table. Behind them 
the big armoured doors were open and the mahogany 
slides drawn back and we could see silver and china 
and very elaborate electrical fittings shining on the 
table, and men in white coats walking about without 
any anxiety at all. On the stern was a great golden 
two-headed eagle and a name in their peculiar wrong- 
way-round lettering which Serge told us later was 
Fontanka. And they sat there, those two men with 
gray beards on their breasts like large bibs, smoking 
and chatting and pointing out the Ouzel to each 
other. It was incredible. And in the cabin behind 
them servants went round and round, and a lamp 
was burning in front of a large picture of the Virgin 
in a glittering frame. I can assure you their placid 
demeanour almost paralyzed us. We began to won- 
der if we hadn't dreamed what had gone before, if we 
weren't still dreaming. But she continued to swing 
and we continued to come up on her, so that soon 
we had a view along her decks again and we knew 
well enough we weren't dreaming very much. 

"For those decks were alive with men. They 
moved continually, replacing each other like a mass 
of insects on a beam. It appeared, from where we 
were, a cable's length or so, like an orderly panic. 
There must have been five or six hundred of them 
climbing, running, walking, pushing, pulling, like 
one of those football matches at the big schools 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 179 

where everybody plays at once. And then our 
whistle blew. I give you my word I did it quite 
unconsciously, in my excitement. If it had been 
Gabriel's trumpet it could not have caused greater 
consternation. I think a good many of them 
thought it was Gabriel's trumpet. It amounted to 
that almost, for the Fontanka took a sort of slide 
forward at that moment and sank several feet by the 
head. All those hundreds of men mounted the rails 
and put up their hands and shouted. It was the 
most horrible thing. They stood there, with up- 
lifted hands and their boats half-lowered and 
shouted. I believe they imagined that I was going 
alongside to take them off. But I had no such 
intention. The Ouzel's sponsons would have been 
smashed, her paddles wrecked, and we would prob- 
ably have gone to the bottom along with them. We 
looked at each other and shouted in sheer fury at 
their folly. We bawled and made motions to lower 
their boats. I put the helm over and moved off a 
little and ordered our own boat down. The fog was 
coming up and the sun was going down. The only 
thing that was calm was the sea. It was like a lake. 
Suddenly several of the Fontanka s boats almost 
dropped into the water and the men began to slide 
down the falls like strings of blue and white beads. 
She took another slide, very slow, but very sickening 
to see. I fixed my glasses on the superstructure 
between the funnels where a large steel crane curved 



i8o HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

over a couple of launches with polished brass funnels. 
And I was simply appalled to find a woman sitting 
in one of the launches with her arms round a little 
boy. She was quite composed, apparently, and was 
watching three men who were working very hard 
about the crane. The launch began to rise in the 
air and two of the men climbed into her. She rose 
and the crane swung outward. We cheered like 
maniacs when she floated. In a flash the other man 
was climbing up the curve of the crane and we saw 
him slide down the wire into the launch. 

"You wouldn't believe," said Captain Gosnell, 
rolling his napkin into a ball and dropping it beside 
his plate, "how it heartened us to see a thing done 
like that, clean and complete. There was even 
smoke coming out of the brass funnel. No doubt 
the launch had been in use in Port Said an hour or 
two before, and the fire was still in her. She moved, 
very slowly, away from the ship's side, and the 
woman sat there with her arms round the little boy, 
surrounded by large trunks and bags, exactly as 
though she were disembarking at Plymouth or 
Southampton, say. 

"By this time, you must understand, the other 
boats were full of men, and one of them was cast off 
while men were sliding down the falls. They held 
on with one hand and waved the other at the men 
above, who proceeded in a very systematic way to 
shde on top of them and then the whole bunch would 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS i8i 

carry away altogether and vanish with a sort of 
compound splash. And then men began to come 
out of side scuttles. They were in a great hurry, 
those chaps. A head would appear and then shoul- 
ders and arms working violently. The man would 
be just getting his knees in a purchase on the scuttle 
frame when he would shoot clean out head first into 
the sea. And another head, the head of the man who 
had pushed him, would come out. 

"But don't forget," warned Captain Gosnell, as 
we rose and began to walk toward the door, "don't 
forget that all these things were happening at once, 
within the space of, roughly, a minute. Don't forget 
the Fontanka was still swarming with men, that the 
sun was just disappearing, very red, in the west, 
that the ship's bows were about level with the 
water, and that for all anybody knew the two 
bearded officers were still sitting in their little 
gallery finishing their drinks. Don't forget all 
this," urged Captain Gosnell, and he paused outside 
an open door through which the others had passed. 
"And then, when you've got that all firmly fixed in 
your mind, she turns right over, shows the great 
red belly of her for perhaps twenty seconds, and 
sinks." 

Captain Gosnell held the match for a moment 
longer to his cigar, threw the stick on the floor and 
strode into the room, leaving me to imagine the thing 
he had described. 



i82 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

It was an immense room, even for that building of 
immense rooms. Three great beds stood in a row 
between two high windows, beds with mosquito 
screens Hke brailed-up mainsails depending from 
spars above them. Broad beams of rough-hewn 
timber supported the roof. There were tables and 
chairs and lounges in distant corners, writing cabi- 
nets, and clothes-presses with doors like the front 
portals of imposing mansions. There was a piano, 
at which one of the officers in uniform was playing 
while Heatly danced with an imaginary partner. 
Mr. Marks, with a just appraisal of the dimensional 
peculiarities of the apartment, had drawn a golf- 
stick from a bag hanging from a cornice and was 
carefully putting a ball of twine into an imaginary 
hole in the centre of the carpet. And behind me 
came Emma in her demure evening attire of black 
and white, bearing a tray with small glasses. 

There is something to be said for the method 
adopted in some foreign military services of corrobo- 
rating introductions by standing rigidly at attention 
and announcing one's own name in a loud, clear voice. 
Our EngHsh way of murmuring "Meet Mr. 
m-m-m," is far from perfect. There was nothing 
ceremonious in the demeanour of those three gentle- 
men in spite of their splendour of attire. One 
was inevitably afflicted with a suspicion that the 
cerise breeches, the blue tunics, and glossy russia- 
leather hessians were no more than properties hired 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 183 

for an evening masquerade. Out of the tunics came 
sinewy necks surmounted by features stamped with 
austere experiences and shadowed by character 
matured against odds of fortune and numbers and 
circumstances. Their frivoHty was obviously the 
holiday mood engendered by their temporary so- 
journ in this fabulous isle of golden sunlight and 
honey-coloured towns and ultramarine harbours. 
They were as incongruous as Heatly and his friends. 
They moved about in that vast and ancient chamber 
like the fantastic figures of a romantic opera. The 
uniforms, the music, the Hquors, became blended 
into a species of confusing and deHghtful languor. 
An elysium from which one looked down upon 
harsh continents of reality and saw the drama of 
sudden death upon calm seas red with the setting 
sun. 

And these three, in their deftly handled and slow- 
moving launch, with their incredible passengers, the 
woman with her arms round a little boy, were the 
first to board the Ouzel. Captain Gosnell had 
stopped his engines, for the sea was thick with 
swimming and floating men. They explained through 
Serge, who had climbed down the crane — a man of 
extended experience in polar regions — that they 
were officers in the Imperial Russian Army entrusted 
with the safe conduct of the lady and her child, and 
therefore claimed precedence over naval ratings. 
That was all very well, of course; but the naval rat- 



i84 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

ings were already swarming up the low fenders of the 
Ouzel, climbing the paddle boxes and making excel- 
lent use of the ropes and slings flung to them by the 
Ouzel's crew. The naval ratings were displaying 
the utmost activity on their own account, im- 
mediately manned the launch, and set off to garner 
the occupants of rafts and gratings. Even in her 
excursion days the Ouzel had never had so many 
passengers. Captain Gosnell would never have 
believed, if he hadn't seen it, that five hundred odd 
souls could have found room to breathe on her 
decks and in her alleyways, all dripping sea-water. 
Captain Gosnell, leaning back on the maroon velvet 
settee and drawing at his cigar, nodded toward the 
talented Serge, who was now playing an intricate 
version of "Tipperary," with many arpeggios, and 
remarked that he had to use him as an interpreter. 
The senior naval oflBcer saved was a gentleman who 
came aboard in his shirt and drawers and a gold 
wrist-watch, having slipped off his clothes on the 
bridge before jumping; but he spoke no English. 
Serge spoke "pretty good English." Serge inter- 
preted excellently. Having seen the lady and her 
little boy, who had gray eyes and a freckled nose, 
installed in the main cabin, he drew the Captain 
aside and explained to him the supreme importance 
of securing the exact position of the foundered ship, 
**in case it was found possible to raise her." 

"We had a short conversation," said the Captain 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 185 

to me, "and from what he told me, I gathered his 
real reasons for wanting the position. There was no 
difficulty about that. We had a chart of the mine- 
field. The next thing was to get to Port Said. It 
was an impossible situation for long. We literally 
had to climb over Russian sailors whenever we 
moved. 

*^And when we got in, and transferred the men to 
hospital and I had made my report, they gave me no 
information to speak of about the ship. I don't 
think they were very clear themselves what she was 
to do, beyond making for the Adriatic. As for the 
passengers, they never mentioned them at all, so of 
course I held my tongue and drew my conclusions. 
Serge told me they had been bound for an Italian 
port whence his party were to proceed to Paris. 
Now he would have to arrange passages to Mar- 
seilles. He took suites in the Marina Hotel, inter- 
viewed agents and banks, hired a motor car, and had 
uniforms made by the best Greek tailor in the town. 
We were living at the Marina while ashore, you see, 
and so it was easy for us to get very friendly. Heatly, 
there, was soon very friendly with the lady.'' 

I looked at Heatly, who was now amiably disput- 
ing the last shot Mr. Marks had made from the tee, 
and then at Captain Gosnell. The experienced 
listener lies in wait for this, and if he makes full use of 
his experience, puts leading questions at once. 

"No," said Captain Gosnell with perfect frank- 



1 86 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

ness. "Not in the very slightest degree. Nothing 
of that. If you ask me, I should call it a sort of — 
chivalry. Anybody who thinks there was ever 
anything — or — ^what you suggest — has no concep- 
tion of the real facts of the case." 

This was surprising, even in that phantasmal 
elysium where we sat enthroned, discussing the 
actions of the mortals below. It seemed to put 
Emma in an equivocal position, and my respect for 
that woman made me reluctant to doubt her in- 
telligence. But Captain Gosnell was in a better 
position than Emma to give evidence. Captain 
Gosnell was conscious that a man can run right 
through the hazards of existence and come out the 
other side with his fundamental virtues unimpaired. 
They all shared this sentiment, I gathered, for this 
lonely woman with the bronze hair and gray eyes; 
but Heatly's imagination had been touched to an 
extraordinary degree. In their interminable dis- 
cussion concerning their future movements, dis- 
cussions highly technical in their nature, because 
investigating a sunken armoured warship is a highly 
technical affair, Heatly would occasionally interject 
a word emphasizing the importance of giving her a 
fair deal. They were all agreed. Serge was of the 
opinion that if they recovered a tenth of the bullion 
which her husband, who had a platinum concession 
in the Asiatic Urals, had consigned to his agent in 
Paris, there would be enough for all. Serge, in 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 187 

short, became the active spirit of the enterprise. He 
knew how to obtain funds from mysterious firms who 
had quiet offices down secluded alleys near Copthall 
Court and Great St. Helen's in London. He made 
sketches and explained where the stuff was stowed, 
and, presuming the ship to be in such and such a 
position, what bulkheads had to be penetrated to 
get into her. He obtained permission to accompany 
the Ouzel on her four-day cruises, and they never had 
a dull moment. He brought water colours along, 
purchased at immense expense from the local ex- 
tortioners, and made astonishing drawings of his 
hosts and their excursion steamer. He sang songs in 
a voice like a musical snarl, songs in obscure dialects, 
songs in indecent French, songs in booming Russian. 
He danced native Russian dances, and the click of his 
heels was like a pneumatic calking-tool at work on a 
rush job. His large serious face, with the long finely 
formed nose, the sensitive mouth, the sad dark eyes 
suddenly illuminated by a beautiful smile, the in- 
numerable tiny criss-cross corrugations above the 
cheek-bones which are the marks of life in polar 
regions, fascinated the Englishmen. Without ever 
admitting it in so many words, they knew him to be 
that extremely rare phenomenon, a leader of men on 
hazardous and lonely quests. Without being at all 
certain of his name, which was polysyllabic and 
rather a burden to an Anglo-Saxon larynx,- they 
discovered his character with unerring accuracy. 



i88 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

When the Greek tailor had completed their uni- 
forms according to instructions (and after three 
years of humdrum khaki and white that Greek 
tailor almost wept over the commission), and the 
three Russian officers began to startle Port Said, the 
three Englishmen remained secure in their con- 
victions. From the very first they seem to have 
been very conscious of the spiritual aspect of the 
adventure. They listened to the tittle-tattle of the 
hotel bars and the Casino dances, and refrained from 
comment. The scheme grew in their minds and pre- 
occupied them. Mr. Marks and Heatly spent days 
and nights over strange designs, and Heatly himself 
worked at the bench in the port alleyway, between 
the paddle-box and the engine room, constructing 
perplexing mechanical monstrosities. 

Captain Gosnell's method of telling his tale may 
have had its defects, but it was admirably adapted 
to the time and the atmosphere. It gave one an 
opportunity to imagine the scenes, supposing one 
knew Port Said. And knowing Port Said, that 
populous spit of sand and scandal, where every 
European woman has been mercilessly dissected 
and put together again (all wrong, of course), one 
inevitably endeavoured to visuahze the lonely woman 
in her hotel suite, with its frail balcony overlooking 
the crowded Canal, and wondered how she fared 
at the hands of the coteries at the Saturday night 
dances at the Casino, or during the post-prandial 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 189 

drinking in the smoke room of the Eastern Exchange. 
The Httle boy would have a great time on the beach, 
or hunting crabs on the rocks near the De Lesseps 
statue. It came out, however, that she — for they 
avoided her formidable surname, referring to her 
by the pronoun or famiharly as Bionda — only used 
the motor car and remained slightly indisposed all 
the time. Their first ship, from Nikolaevsk to Kobe, 
had been in collision. There was nothing out of the 
way in a woman keeping secluded after these ex- 
periences. Vanished to Cairo and Alexandria and 
paid lengthy visits to high officials who dwelt in 
magnificent villas at Ismailia. Her remoteness only 
subhmated the regard of the men who had saved her. 
This became clearer, the longer Captain Gosnell 
talked of that time. And at that time, too, she was 
remote because she was still supposedly wealthy, 
beyond their station in Hfe, independent of their 
solicitude. 

But as weeks went by and Serge continued to 
communicate with Paris and London, it became 
clear that he was not at all easy in his mind. Some 
people say, of course, that no Russian is easy in 
his mind; but this was an altruistic anxiety. He 
judged it would be best if they were to get on to 
Paris, where Bionda had relatives and he himself 
could resume active operations again. 

And so they started, this time in a French mail- 
boat bound for Marseilles. Our three mine-sweepers 



I90 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

saw them ofF. And Captain Gosnell, as we walked 
up the Strada Stretta and emerged upon the brilhant 
Strada Reale, was able to convey a hint of the actual 
state of affairs. 

**She knew nothing/' he said. "She was still 
under the impression that there would always be an 
endless stream of money coming from somebody 
in Paris, or London. She was, if you can excuse 
the word, Hke a child empress. But there wasn't 
any such stream. Serge and the others had a little 
of their own; but hers was mostly in an ammunition 
chamber on B deck in a foundered warship, along 
with the bullion, bound to the Siberian Bank. She 
wasn't worrying about money at all. She was wish- 
ing she was in Marseilles, for her experiences on 
ships hadn't given her a very strong confidence in 
their safety. And Serge was anxious to get her to 
Paris to her relatives before what money she had 
ran out. 

**But she never reached Marseilles. They were 
two days off Malta when an Austrian submarine 
torpedoed the French liner and sank her. They did 
not fire on the boats. And our lady friend found 
herself being rowed slowly toward a place of which 
she had no knowledge whatever. Serge told us 
they were pulling for eighteen hours before they 
were picked up." 

"And she is here now.?" I asked cautiously. 

"Here now," said Captain Gosnell. "She usually 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 191 

comes down here for an hour in the evening. If 
she's here, I'll introduce you." 

We passed across the Piazza Regina, among tables 
and chairs stacked for the night, for the air was now 
cold. Within the cafe we found much cheerful 
company, for it was a saint's day of some sort and 
family parties from Cospicua and Civita Vecchia 
were loth to quit the cakes and wine for the long 
dark ride home. Some naval gentlemen were 
gulping their last round of drinks before descending 
to the Harbour, and a number of seafarers from 
a freighter, not quite comprehending the sort of 
hostelry they were patronizing, were making a noise. 

She was sitting on a plush lounge at the extreme 
rear of the cafe, and when I first set eyes on her I was 
disappointed. I had imagined something much 
more magnificent, more alluring, than this. In 
spite of Captain Gosnell's severely prosaic narrative 
of concrete facts, he had been unable to keep from 
me the real inspiration of the whole adventure. I 
was prepared to murmur, **Was this the face that 
launched a thousand ships.?" and so on as far as I 
could remember of that famous bit of rant. One 
gets an exalted notion of women who are credited 
with such powers, who preserve some vestige of 
the magic that can make men "immortal with a 
kiss." Bionda, in a large fur coat and broad- 
brimmed hat of black velvet, had cloaked her divin- 
ity, and the first impression was Christian rather 



192 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

than pagan. **A tired saint," I thought, as I sat 
down after the introduction and looked at the pale 
bronze hair and the intelhgent gray eyes. She had a 
very subtle and pretty way of expressing her ap- 
preciation of the homage rendered by these diverse 
masculine personalities. Her hands, emerging from 
the heavy fur sleeves, were white and extremely 
thin, with several large rings. She had nothing to 
say to a stranger, which was natural enough, and I 
sat in silence watching her. She spoke EngHsh with 
musical deUberation, rolling the r's and hesitating at 
times in a choice of words, so that one waited with 
pleasure upon her pauses and divined the rhythm 
of her thoughts. She preserved in all its admirable 
completeness that mystery concerning their ulti- 
mate purpose in the world which is so essential to 
women in the society of men. And it was therefore 
with some surprise that I heard her enunciate with 
intense feeling, "Oh, never, never, never!" There 
was an expression of sad finality about it. She was 
conveying to them her fixed resolve never to board 
a ship again. Ships had been altogether too much 
for her. She did not like the sea in any case and 
rarely visited the Harbour. She had been inland all 
her hfe and her recent catastrophes had robbed 
her of her reserves of fortitude. She would remain 
here in this island. She sat staring at the marble 
table as though she saw in imagination the infinite 
reaches of the ocean — blue, green, gray, or black, 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 193 

forever fluid and treacherous, a sinister superficies 
beneath which the bodies and achievements of men 
disappeared as into some unknown lower region. 
Women have many vaHd reasons for hating the 
sea; this woman seemed dimly aware of a certain 
jealousy of it — of the alluring masculine element 
which destroyed men without any aid from women 
at all. Her faith in ships had not suffered ship- 
wreck so much as foundered. There was no use 
arguing that the distance to Marseilles was a mere 
four or five days. If it were only as many hours 
— never, never, never! 

Suddenly she gathered up her gloves and trinkets 
and said she must be going as it was late. She had 
worked hard that day and was tired. Would some- 
body escort her as far as the Strada Mezzodi? 
We rose, and as if by preconcerted arrangement, 
divided into two parties. It was the general rule, 
I gathered, that the gentlemen who had acted as 
her bodyguard for so long should undertake this 
nightly duty. We filed out into the deserted square, 
and the last view we had of them was the small 
fur-clad figure tripping away up the empty and 
romantic street while over her towered the three 
tall soldiers, looking like benevolent brigands in 
their dark cloaks. As we turned in the other 
direction, toward the Grand Harbour, Captain 
Gosnell remarked that they were going down to 
the ship, and if I cared to come they could show 



194 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

me something I had probably never seen before. 
We descended the stone stairs leading to the Customs 
House Quay. While they conversed in low tones 
among themselves I turned the matter over in my 
mind. To see them diving with long strides down 
those broad shallow steps, the solitary lamps burn- 
ing before dim shrines high up, lighting their forms 
as for some religious mystery, they appeared as men 
plunging in the grip of powerful and diverse emotions. 
The Captain was plain enough to any intelligence. 
He desired money that he might maintain his posi- 
tion in England — a country where it is almost 
better to lose one's soul than one's position. Mr. 
Marks, beneath the genial falsity of a wig, concealed 
an implacable fidelity to a mechanical ideal. Heatly, 
on the other hand, was not so easily analyzed as 
Emma had suggested. He appeared the inarticulate 
victim of a remote and magnificent devotion. He 
gave the impression of a sort of proud irritability 
that he should have been thus afflicted. There 
might easily be no remorse in his heart, since he 
was justified in assuming that a wife with seven 
children would be simply bewildered if she were made 
the object of such a romantic extravagance. So 
far as could be ascertained, he was a little bewildered 
by it himself. 

So we came down to the water, and walked along 
the quay until we hailed a small, broad-beamed 
steamer, very brightly lit, yet solitary so that Cap- 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 195 

tain Gosnell had to use a silver whistle which he 
carried, and the shrill blast reechoed from the high 
ramparts of the Castle of Sant' Angelo. A boat 
came slowly toward us, showing sharply black 
against the swaying brightness of the water, and 
we went aboard. She was a strange blend of ex- 
pensive untidiness. Great pumps and hoses, costly 
even when purchased second-hand, lay red and rusty 
and slathered with dry mud, about her decks. We 
descended a foul ladder through an iron scuttle 
leading to the one great hold forward. The 'tween- 
decks were workshops with lathes, drills, and savage- 
looking torch-furnaces. Things that looked like 
lawn mowers afflicted with elephantiasis revealed 
themselves on inspection as submersible boring- 
heads and cutters that went down into inaccessible 
places, like marine ferrets, and did execution there. 
In the centre, however, suspended from a beam, was 
the great affair. It would be vain to describe the 
indescribable. It resembled in a disturbing way a 
giant spider with its legs curled semicircularly 
about its body. A formidable domed thing with 
circular glass eyes set in it and a door as of a safe or 
the breech-block of a gun. From this protruded 
a number of odd-looking mechanisms, and below 
it, flanked by caterpillar belts, on which the contriv- 
ance walked with dignity upon the bed of the ocean, 
were large sharp-bladed cutters, like steel whorls. 
While I gazed at this, endeavouring to decide how 



196 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

much was reality and how much merely excited 
imagination, Mr. Marks went down and proceeded 
to set a ladder against the side of the machine. He 
grasped wheels and levers, he spoke with vehemence 
to Heatly, who ran to a switchboard and encased 
his head in a kind of Hstening helmet. Then Mr. 
Marks chmbed nimbly through the aperture and 
drew the door to with a click. A light appeared 
within shining through the enormously thick glass and 
revealing a fantastic travesty of Mr. Marks moving 
about in his steel prison. Captain Gosnell indicated 
the triumphant perfection of this thing. They were 
in constant telephonic connection with him. He 
could direct a bright beam in any direction and he 
could animate any one or all of the extraordinary, 
hmbs of the machine. Suppose a ship lay in sand, 
shale, mud, or gravel. He could dig himself under 
her, dragging a hawser which could be made fast 
to a float on each side. He could fasten on to a 
given portion of the hull, drill it, cut it, and in time 
crawl inside on the caterpillar feet. He had food, 
hot and cold drinks, and oxygen for two days. He 
could sit and read if he liked or talk to the people 
on the ship. And quite safe, no matter how deep. 
Wonderful ! 

I dare say it was. It was a fabulous-looking 
thing anyhow, and as Mr. Marks, moving like a 
visible brain in a transparent skull, started and stop- 
ped his alarming extremities, it struck me that human- 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 197 

ity was in danger of transcending itself at last. 
It was soothing to come up on deck again and see 
Sant" Angelo in the moonlight like the backcloth 
of an Italian opera. It was a comfort to hear 
that one of the men, who ought to have been on duty, 
was drunk. Perhaps he had found the machinery 
too jx)werful for his poor weak human soul and had 
fled ashore to drown the nightmare of mechanism 
in liquor. One could imagine the men-at-arms, 
whose duty it was to watch from those stone towers, 
in ancient days, slipping out of some newly in- 
vented corselet with a jangle and clang, and stealing 
away in an old leather jerkin only half laced to make 
a night of it. 

Not that there was anything fundamentally 
at odds with romance in this extraordinary adven- 
ture into deep waters, I mused as I lay in my vast 
chamber that night. Knights in armour, releasing vir- 
gin forces of wealth buried in the ocean. Heatly was 
moving about in the next room, smoking a cigarette. 

**What does she do for a living?" I asked. He 
came and stood in the doorway in his pajamas. 
He blew a thread of tobacco from his lips. 

**She keeps a tea-shop near the Opera House," 
he said. "We don't go there; knowing her as we 
do, it wouldn't be the right thing." 

*'But I can, I suppose," I suggested. 

**Yes, you can, I suppose," he assented from 
somewhere within his room. 



198 HARBOURS OF MJEMORY 

"You don't object, of course?" I went on. 
The light went out. 



And wedged in between Lanceolottis' music shop 
and Marcu's emporium of Maltese bijouterie I 
found a modest door and window. In the latter 
was a simple card with the word TEAS in large 
print. Below it was a samovar, and a couple of 
table centres made of the local lace. 

It was early afternoon and I was at liberty. 
The gentleman who had been playing polo the day 
before was to be seen at his office and he had been 
good enough to inform me that the ship to which 
I had been appointed would arrive from Odessa 
in a few days' time. In the meanwhile I could walk 
about and amuse myself. This was easy enough. 
I walked up the Strada Mezzodi and found the 
window with the card announcing teas. I walked 
into a room, in which a mezzanine floor had been 
constructed, with an iron spiral staircase in one corner. 
The little boy with the gray eyes and the freckled 
nose came clattering down the stairs and I also 
observed that in the shadows behind the piled 
pdttiserie the gray eyes of Bionda were upon me. 

"Can I go upstairs?" I asked the boy and he 
smiled and nodded with dehghtful friendliness. 

"Then I will," I said, and he rushed up in front 
of me. There was nobody there. He cleaned a 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 199 

table by the low window. Across the street was 
the broad and beautiful facade of the Opera House. 
The announcement board bore the legend: To-night 
Faust. 

"You want tea?" said the boy, with a forward 
dart of his head, like an inquisitive bird. I nodded. 

"Toast?" I nodded again. 

"I thought you were at the hotel," I remarked. 

"Only in the evenings," he explained, lifting his 
tray. "You want cakes, too?" I nodded again and 
he seemed to approve of my catholic taste. A low 
voice said, "Karl!" and he hurried down out of 
sight. 

I was sitting there munching a bun and enjoying 
some really well-made tea (with lemon) and watch- 
ing a number of cheerful, well-dressed people emerg- 
ing from the theatre, when something caused me to 
look round and I saw the face of Bionda just above 
the floor. She was standing at a turn in the stair 
regarding me attentively. I rose, and she came on up. 

"I thought," she said without raising her eyes, 
"that I had seen you before. Have you everything 
you wish?" 

"Everything except someone to talk to," I said, 
and she raised her eyes with a serious expression in 
them. 

"I will talk if you wish," she said gravely. 

"Do sit down," I begged. I wished to sit down 
myself for the window was low. She complied. 



20O HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

**I am a friend of Mr. Heatly's," I went on. Her 
face lighted up. 

**He is a very nice man/' she said, laughing. "He 
likes me very much. He told me he was going to 
look after me for the rest of my life. He makes 
me laugh very much. You like him.?'' 

"I used to be on the same ship with him," I said. 
''Years ago, before he was married." 

**Ah, yes, before he was married. I see.' Now 
you go on a ship again?" 

"When she arrives from Odessa." 

"From " she looked hard at me. "Perhaps 

there will be news, if she comes from Odessa." 

"Maybe." She sighed. "You have had no 
news then, since the Revolution?" I asked. 

"Nothing. Not one single word. In there, it is 
all dark. When your ship comes, there will be 
passengers, no?" 

"Ah, I couldn't say," I repHed. "We must wait. 
If there are any, I will let you know." 

"Thank you." Her gaze wandered across the 
street. "They have finished the play. What do 
you call when they sing — before?" 

"A rehearsal, you mean." 

"Yes. Well, they have finished. There is Me- 
phistopheles coming out now." She nodded toward 
a tall gentleman in tweeds who was smoking a ciga- 
rette and swinging a cane on the upper terrace. "He 
waits for Margarita. There she is." A robust crea- 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 201 

ture emerged, putting on long gloves, and the two 
descended to the sidewalk. Bionda laughed. 

"Does Margarita usually walk out with Me- 
phisto?" I asked. 

"Oh, they are married!*' she informed me with a 
whimsical grimace. "And very happy." 

"What are you?" I demanded abruptly. "Not a 
Slav, I am sure." 

"Me? No. I am a Bohemian," she said. 

"How appropriate! How exquisitely appropri- 
ate!" I murmured. 

"From Prag," she added, sighing a little. 

"An enemy?" She nodded. "But if you will 
only consider yourself Czecho-Slovak. . . ."I 
suggested. She made a gesture of dissent and rose. 

"Let me know when your ship comes in," she said, 
and I promised. Three young naval lieutenants in 
tennis undress came up the stairs and called for tea. 
The little boy came up to take their order and I 
paid him and went out. 

Our intimacy increased, of course, as the days 
passed, and I began to wonder whether or not I, too, 
was about to pass under the spell and devote my 
life to the ameUoration of her destiny. If my ship 
went back to Odessa I would be the bearer of mes- 
sages, an agent of inquiry seeking news of a dim 
concessionaire in the Siberian Urals. I made ex- 
tensive promises, chiefly because I was pretty sure 
my ship w^ould probably go somewhere else, Bizerta 



202 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

or Tunis. The simple sailor man in time develops a 
species of simple cunning, to protect himself from 
being too oppressively exploited. But it is prac- 
tically impossible to rid a woman of the illusion that 
she is imposing upon a man. Even Emma thought 
it well to warn me of my danger. She had heard 
rumours about that woman. Where had she got 
the money to start her tea-shop, eh ? And when all 
the officers had gone home, where would she get cus- 
tomers? And so on. 

These questions did not preoccupy Bionda herself, 
however. She was sad, but her sadness was the in- 
evitable result of delightful memories. Her life 
had been full and animated, and it was only natural, 
since fate had left her stranded on a pleasant island, 
that she should indulge her desire for retrospect 
before rousing to do herself full justice in the new 
environment. The possibility of regaining the wealth 
that had been lost did not seem to interest her at all. 
She never spoke of the expedition of Captain Gosnell 
and his fellow adventurers. It seemed doubtful 
at times whether she understood anything at all 
about it. A shrug and she changed the subject. 

And then one day I was stopped by two of the 
Russian officers as they came down the hotel stairs 
and they told me they had received their orders 
at last. They were to report at Paris. 

"We sail to-morrow for Marseilles," said one, and 
his great spur jingled as he stamped his foot to settle 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 203 

it in the high boot. He stared at me in a puzzled 
way as though he were not quite sure I was to be 
trusted with this information, and drew his handker- 
chief from his sleeve. He had scarcely spoken to me 
since we had met, and indeed his round head and 
blank blue eyes had so worried me with the notion 
that he was a Prussian that I had not regretted his 
silence. He was rather a shy youth, however, and 
my fancies were quite unfounded. With consider- 
able difficulty he made known their hope that I 
would give Madame any assistance in my power when 
her other friends were gone. I agreed to this with 
alacrity, since I myself would probably be a thousand 
miles away in a few weeks' time. And the little boy, 
Karl. Yes, I would look after him, too. He seemed 
happy enough, learning the hotel business like a 
good Bohemian. They shook hands solemnly. The 
transport was signalled. They were to go on board 
as soon as she docked. 

I could see, what they did not seem so very con- 
scious of, that the whole episode was going to blow 
up on them. This is the great fact so passionately 
denied by all romanticists — the mortality of an emo- 
tion. And it was the Saturday night before my ship 
arrived (she came in on Monday evening I remember) 
that I joined Captain Gosnell and his lieutenants at 
the Cafe de la Reine. They were exceedingly yet 
decorously drunk. They sailed the next morning. 
They had adjourned to a small ante-room of the 



204 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

cafe and through a closed glass door an amused pub- 
lic could obtain glimpses of the orgy. Captain 
Gosnell's austere features had grown gradually 
purple, and though he never became incoherent, nor 
even noisy, it was obvious he had reached another 
psychic plane. And so there may have been a signi- 
ficance in the grandiose gesture with which he raised 
a glass of champagne and murmured : 

"To Her, whom we all adore, who awaits . . . 
awaits our return. Our mascot. May she bring 
us luck." 

He sat down and looked in a puzzled way at the 
empty glass. He gradually drank himself sober 
and helped me to get the others into a cab. Mr. 
Marks, his wig over one eye, snored. Heatly began 
to sing in the clear night: 

" Wide as the world is her Kingdom of power.'' 

The cab started. Captain Gosnell waved a dig- 
nified farewell. As they turned the corner I heard 
the high windy voice still singing: 

**/n every heart she hath fashioned her throne: 
As Queen oj the Earth, she reigneth alone. . . 

And then silence. 

And next morning, after Early Mass, as we walked 
slowly up the ramp and came to a pause on the 
ramparts of the Lower Barracca, I was curious to 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 205 

discover whether this departure of her champions 
would make any authentic impression upon her 
spirit. The sea lay in one immense sheet of placid 
misty blue. Bells boomed from distant belfries and 
there was a sudden snarl from a bugle down below. 

"Suppose," I was saying, "we had a message from 
Odessa, that your husband had arrived.^ And sup- 
pose he sent for you? Or that he had reached Paris 
and wanted you there ? " 

"Oh, yes, I should go, of course. It would be like 
life again, after being dead." 

It was almost as though a lamp had been lit 
within her. She was transfigured. She smiled as a 
goddess smiles when men immolate themselves be- 
fore her. One would have imagined her words had 
a literal meaning, that she had been dead, and that 
the very thought which I had expressed was sufficient 
to galvanize her into glorious life. 

This gave me a good deal to think about, and I 
looked down into the Grand Harbour where a small 
squat ship with her decks muddy and disreputable 
was pulHng out into the fairway. Here was a fine 
state of affairs! We were all ghosts to her, phan- 
toms inhabiting another shadowy world cut off from 
life by an immense, pitiless blue sea. Compared 
with that distant and possibly defunct concession- 
aire in the Asiatic Urals, we were all impalpable 
spectres! Our benevolence had about as much con- 
scious significance for her as the sunHght upon a 



2o6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

plant. I did not speak again until the little steamer, 
with a croak of her whistle, passed out between the 
guns of the harbour-mouth and began slowly to recede 
across the mighty blue floors, a great quantity of 
foul smoke belching from her funnel and drifting 
across the rocks. And then I mentioned casually 
what was happening, that those men were bound 
upon her affairs, seeking treasure at the bottom of 
the sea, devoted to an extravagant quest. 

And she made no reply. The steamer receded yet 
farther. It became a black blob on the blue water, a 
blob from which smoke issued, as though it were a 
bomb which might explode suddenly with a tremen- 
dous detonation, and leave no trace. But Bionda's 
eyes were not fixed upon the steamer. She was gaz- 
ing musingly upon the great cannon frowning down 
from the farther fortress. And after a while she 
sighed. 

*'Like life, after being dead," she murmured again. 

It was as though she had forgotten us. She was 
like a departed spirit discontented with the con- 
veniences and society of paradise, who desires to 
return but dreads the journey. And it became an 
acute question, whether at any time she had achieved 
any real grasp of her position. Had she ever realized 
how she had inspired these men to unsuspected senti- 
ments and released the streams of heroic energy 
imprisoned in their hearts.? Did she suspect even for 
a moment how she had engaged their interest, 



KNIGHTS AND TURCOPOLIERS 207 

monopolized their time, established herself in de- 
fiance of all the rules of life in the midst of their ahen 
affection ? Did she know or care how they toiled and 
suffered, and perhaps sinned, for her? Did she ever 
imagine herself as she was, resting not upon the 
inert earth, but rechning in comfort upon the taut 
and anxious bodies of men? 

Or one may put the question this way — Does 
any woman? 



SOME GOOD BUT INSUFFICIENT REASONS 
FOR SILENCE 

The writer of these notes is a Lieutenant of Reserve 
in the Royal Navy (unless he has been recently de- 
mobilized or dismissed for assailing the Admiralty 
with gratuitous advice), on service in a vessel cruis- 
ing along the gloomy and mysterious shores of 
Anatolia; and it is therefore to be premised that 
interruptions in the narrative are inevitable from 
time to time. Indeed, it may very well happen that 
this article will consist largely of interruptions con- 
nected by conscientious attempts to do some "fine 
writing." This by the way. 

[At this point it was found necessary for the 
writer of these notes to resume his duties as Chief 
Engineer, orders having been received by wireless 
to proceed to a prearranged island in the ^Egean, 
to meet His Majesty's battle cruiser Inevitable and 
suckle her with oil-fuel. And while engaged upon 
this desperate adventure, the writer's mind was led 
away from the main argument and dwelt for a while 
upon the probable impression conveyed to the aver- 
age reader by the phrase '^a Lieutenant of Reserve." 
There is something sombre and forbidding in the very 

208 



REASONS FOR SILENCE 209 

sound of it, so that one feels there must be tragedy 
impHed. One is reminded of Schomberg, the Ger- 
man hotel-keeper in Conrad's '' Victory," who was 
** supposed" to be **a Lieutenant of Reserve." 
Conrad himself is ironically magnanimous. So he 
may have been, he concedes in passing, and leaves 
Schomberg to get what comfort and credit he can 
out of his ambiguous status in the Imperial Service. 
Personally, the writer imagines that Conrad may 
have misunderstood Schomberg. Any one who has 
had the melancholy experience of being a Lieu- 
tenant of Reserve must entertain doubts whether 
even a German hotel-keeper would want to brag 
about it. However, the writer's conscience forbids 
him to sail under false colours, and he toes the line 
with Schomberg (who he believes was staying re- 
cently at a hotel in Malta and posing as a Swiss 
automobile salesman) and confesses himself a Lieu- 
tenant of Reserve. He is in what is satirically 
known as "the prime of Hfe," and while not bearing 
any violent resentment toward the European War 
which has had four very valuable years of that prime, 
he sincerely hopes that some small portion of the 
** freedom" which has been won will be granted to him 
before old age sets in.] 

While entering the lonely and land-locked harbour 
of the tryst and making fast alongside the towering 
structure of the Inevitable, it is impossible to refrain 
from wondering what Ulysses would have to say 



2IO HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

about a war-galley of thirty thousand tons with 
eleven hundred men on board. The notion — suppos- 
ing his spirit to haunt the scenes of his exploits — is 
not far-fetched. One cannot doubt that he used 
this harbour during his operations against Troy. 
His astute intelligence would appreciate the ad- 
vantages of the treacherous shoal right under the 
headland at the entrance, and we can imagine him 
cursing the local Greeks for their frightful charges 
and incredible stupidity. 

[At this point the writer's attention is claimed 
by the momentous information that the Inevitable 
objects to our oil. Our Chief Officer, in overalls 
and thick leather gauntlets, is being vituperated 
by a total stranger, also in overalls and thick leather 
gauntlets. Each of them waves festoons of litmus 
paper, wherewith he has been testing the acidity of 
the oil. What strikes one about the altercation 
is the deep humanity of it. The stranger is obsessed 
with a wild and romantic ideal, which is to have his 
fuel-tanks perennially full of a miraculously perfect 
oil. The Chief Officer is beset with a profound and 
fanatical conviction that his tanks never contain 
anything else save this same pellucid produce. 
"Pride, human pride," one reflects, venturing near 
the combatants and cautiously interpolating a few 
words of compromise. Above, on the rail of the 
Inevitable, on her dizzy bridges, looking out from 
behind her mammoth guns, and even peering down 



REASONS FOR SILENCE 2 1 1 

from the Olympian heights of her tripod masts, 
other human beings, full of pride and foolish mis- 
conceptions, watch the affray. Near by, two or 
three bluejackets, in blue overalls, wrestle with the 
enormous hoses, and seem striving to assume the 
pose of Laocoon and his sons, writhing in the grasp 
of some horrible and interminable metallic serpent 
of the sea. And this notion leads one to reconsider 
the possibility of Ulysses affording any fresh insight 
into his own mentality by his views concerning the 
Inevitable. After all, the chances are that he would 
merely take her as a matter of course and add her to 
the long list of improbable monsters which, so he said, 
he vanquished by his guile.] 

It is time, however — and a lull in the activity fa- 
vours the enterprise — to enlighten the reader con- 
cerning some of the good but insufficient reasons for 
silence. It would be a cruel thing to arouse curi- 
osity only to evade satisfying it in a bold and manly 
fashion — "after the way of the EngHsh, in straight- 
flung words and few," as Kipling says. Those who 
have heard an Englishman explaining anything 
will recognize the likeness. Hearken, for instance, 
to these two on the afterdeck. The fact is, the 
writer, in addition to being a Lieutenant of Reserve 
in the prime of life, is addicted to Hterature, and has 
occasionally aggravated the offence by pubHshing 
books. In this his experience and morality in no 
way differs from that of thousands of other solvent 



212 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

and likable men. But what has impressed him very 
forcibly in contemplating his existence as seafarer 
and author is, that in the very nature of things 
he is deprived of the joys and amenities of the liter- 
ary Hfe, and has begun to doubt whether his labour 
in that sphere is not mainly altruistic. Hence he is 
moved to set down the various good but on the whole 
insufficient reasons for going out of the writing busi- 
ness altogether and resigning himself to a purely 
local expression of opinion. 

Take, for example, the question of applause. 
Keats declared he wrote **for fame," and if we an- 
alyze what Keats meant by fame we shall find that 
it includes contemporary applause. But of what 
use is applause to a man a thousand miles from 
Washington Square or Chelsea Embankment or 
Montmartre ? The writer is not suggesting that an 
author at home hears continually the thunder of pub- 
lic approbation shaking his casements. His concep- 
tion of how a literary man passes his time at home 
is necessarily vague and touched with romance, but 
it certainly includes a certain amount of social gam- 
boHing among artistic persons, persons who can 
tolerate the nuance and allusiveness so dear to 
bookish folk. 

He imagines himself, for example, the guest of the 
evening at one of those old wainscoted and panelled 
houses on Clapham Common (doubtless pulled down 
long ago). There is a pleasant rustle of anticipation 



REASONS FOR SILENCE 213 

as he enters the room, and the women — most of the 
party are women, and young — examine him with 
eager dehght as he is presented. The young women, 
he imagines, are clever as well as beautiful. They 
"write a little," they are persuaded to confess, but 
allow their admiration for his books to shine in their 
eyes. Their conversation is only so-so perhaps, but 
that is because they wish their guest to do himself 
justice. The picture gets a little vague just here, 
one must admit, because as a matter of fact the 
writer is in the habit of smoking a particularly 
strong brand of tobacco all the evening and he can 
scarcely visualize those charming girls sitting in the 
opaque fog which usually sets in about nine. . . . 
The fact is, the writer is idealizing the memories 
which have survived from what is tabulated in his 
literary consciousness as his "Chelsea period." It 
should be explained that in his pre-maritime days he 
roomed with a Bohemian in a flat on Cheyne Walk 
and became a hanger-on of the various cliques who 
infested the neighbourhood at that time. It was in 
the days when Whistler lived in an absurd house 
with a poHshed copper door — a door past which the 
writer saw him borne to his grave, followed by 
a mob of well-dressed artists, who were all secretly 
glad that the great man had passed away. He 
remembers the tense atmosphere in the church, 
strangely compounded of ecclesiasticism and wordly 
ambition, the staccato whisper of the lady -reporter — 



214 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

**What name please?" — and her venomous look 
when he murmured absently, "Pinturicchio". . . . 
However, it was a failure. The cliques of Chelsea 
were not to be deceived. A mechanical draftsman 
from the city, a youth who was neither rich, clever, 
nor good-looking, was destined to remain outside the 
magic circle of the Chelsea geniuses. 

Yet he gained an occasional glimpse into their 
mysteries. In the cant phrase of the cliques he 
"met" So-and-So and Thingumbob and Toodleoo 
and Rumty-tum. He narrowed his resources to 
acquire the evening dress suit and planished shirt 
front — the suit which long since passed into the 
hands of a Shaftesbury Avenue dealer in old clothes, 
and which will never be replaced. He "met" these 
people and came to various damaging conclusions 
concerning them. But this did not hinder him from 
realizing that, if he could only get inside, he would 
have a very pleasant time. He would take literary 
ladies home in cabs and dazzle them with his scintil- 
lating wit and satire. He would be the life of the 
studio parties which were attended mostly by hum- 
bugs who could not paint. He would be pointed out, 
as he hurried along Cheyne Walk, to Americans from 

Memphis, Tennessee. He would but this sort of 

thing tends to futility. It was a failure. In spite 
of his art-green wall paper and Liberty curtains; in 
spite of his Botticelli prints and poems on "The 
River at Dusk," and so forth, it was borne in upon 



REASONS FOR SILENCE 215 

him that not only did the cognoscenti dislike him, but 
he disHked them. The impression he gathered from 
successful artists and authors was that their pasts 
were shameful and they had no desire to speak of 
them; while the young and obscure did not seem to 
be getting anywhere at all. . . . 

Certainly the writer himself was not getting any- 
where except into debt. The promised reactions 
did not come. Useless to acquire a mass of technical 
jargon from painters and still remain a mechanical 
draftsman in the city. Futile to haunt studios 
for Hterary conversation when each new acquaint- 
ance seemed more stupid and suspicious than the 
last. The pervasive drawl of the Oxford-gone- 
wrong parasites — "Awfully clever chap; have you 
met him?" — became a nightmare. And having col- 
lected some poems, the writer cast about for an 
editor. 

Now it was a notable characteristic of Chelsea 
society in those days that it was, as it were, sus- 
pended in mid-air, hke Mahomet's rock. It had no 
visible means of support. It was artistic, but nobody 
seemed to earn his living by art. It was suavely 
democratic, without the slightest contact with the 
democracy. It is the writer's opinion that the 
democracy, had it become aware of the existence of 
Chelsea society, would have battered down the 
aesthetic doors and put every artist and parasite to 
the sword. Of course many innocents, like the 



21 6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

writer, would have been slaughtered^ but the effect 
upon England would have been distinctly invigorat- 
ing. 

By suavely democratic the writer implies that 
these people affected an indifference to **mere 
wealth." A woman who had an income of ten 
thousand pounds a year from a Bavarian brewery 
asked the writer to join her in her morning ride in 
the Park at — oh, quite early, say ten-thirty . 
A breezy creature in Donegal tweeds said he was 
making up a party to tour the Hungarian Alps — 
would the writer come? And a man in a pince-nez 
talked of pubHshing as though the thing were done 
every day. "Why don't you pubhsh? I'll intro- 
duce you to let me see now . . ." (The writer 

trembled with a fearful joy. Here was the open 
door at last!) **0h, I'll give you a card to Tyne- 
mouth Banks. He's just taken over the Academic 
Review, Accept.^ My experience of Tynemouth 
Banks is that he'll accept anything. Prices.? Oh, 
a guinea . . ." 

[An interruption in the form of a tremendous 
shock causes the writer at this juncture to abandon 
his reveries of literary adventures and run up the 
ward-room companion. The Inevitable has moved 
away. A gigantic submarine, like some fabled 
monster of the deep, is manoeuvring alongside and 
one of her diving planes has ripped a hole in our 
quarter very much as a pair of scissors cuts a gash in 



REASONS FOR SILENCE 217 

brown paper. The excitement is acute. The Chief 
Officer, accompanied by his men, seems to be en- 
gaged in some intricate caHsthenic exercises. The 
submarine remains calm. Her twelve-inch gun 
droops, and seems to be regarding us with moody 
suspicion. It transpires that she wants a hundred 
tons of oil and wants it quick. Her commander 
receives with apathy the news that water is coming 
into our after coffer-dam. All hands proceed to 
the work of salvage. Wood is sawn, nails are 
produced, cement is mixed, shores are prepared, and 
a box filled with concrete heaved up and forced 
against the torn plates. The inspiration passes 
and all subside into a sullen, hard-breathing silence. 
The sea is an inhuman thing.] 

The writer knew nothing about the Academic 
Review, as he chooses to call it. It cost sixpence, and 
he could not afford sixpences in those days. More- 
over, it was one of those journals which for years had 
been the sport of wealthy amateurs who knew very 
little about journalism and nothing at all about 
literature. At this time a sporting peer had bought 
it and installed Tynemouth Banks in the editorial 
chair. Tynemouth Banks was reputed to be an 
expert editor. In the British Museum Library he 
was announced as the author of *' Highways and 
Byways in the Frisian Islands," a handbook for 
tourists. The new offices of the Academic Review 
were in Serjeants' Inn, between Clifford's Inn and 



2i8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 



1 



Chancery Lane. A young lady with many bangles 
(bangles were jingling everywhere in those days) took 
the two cards which the writer offered, but said Mr. 
Tynemouth Banks was out. As he wandered 
through Clifford's Inn, where he afterward had 
chambers and wrote half of a long novel, the writer 
began to wonder whether the doors were open to 
him after all. A few days later, when an invitation 
to call at Tynemouth Banks's private residence in 
Onslow Gardens came to the flat in Cheyne Walk, he 
still wondered. Some faint premonition warned 
him that this was not the way. Nevertheless, the 
dress suit came out and he made his way to Onslow 
Gardens, a high range of heartless houses near 
Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors. 

It is only honest to confess that this was almost the 
only occasion on which the writer had met an editor. 
Editors were to him a mythical race. And the ad- 
venture seems so improbable now that he often 
wonders whether the whole thing is not a dream. 
Tynemouth Banks turned out to be a sleek, beady- 
eyed, black-mustached little creature, wearing valu- 
able rings and a black opal stud. Two stockbrokers 
and a short-haired woman in an Empire gown were 
drinking whisky in the billiard room. One of the 
stockbrokers told a story about a young woman 
who ... a story the writer had heard in the 
machine shop six years before. There was a yell of 
laughter 



REASONS FOR SILENCE 219 

"Published anything yet?" asked the editor of the 
Academic Review as they went upstairs. 

It might be supposed that the writer, after such an 
experience, might have lost his illusions as to the 
idylHc nature of the literary life ashore. But il- 
lusions about shore Hfe die hard at sea. It seems 
unreasonable to forego the simple delights of author- 
ship: the tea-table tattle about So-and-So's prices 
and Thingumbob's last book, how Miss Boodle was 
determined to marry the author of "The Misogy- 
nist" and succeeded — and has twins . . . Hard 
to do without proofs. When the proofs of the 
writer's first book were ready, he was repairing a 
broken condenser in the gasping heat of Singapore in 
July. On the next occasion he was cooling bananas 
in Costa Rica. Proofs found him again in a creek of 
the Niger River. Proofs are stubborn things. If 
any author wishes to know how stubborn, let him 
come up from below, where it is a hundred and 
thirty Fahrenheit, to his room where it is apparently 
a hundred and eighty, his finger-nails broken and 
destroyed with oil, his heart full of care and the pe- 
culiar bitterness which sea life engenders — and find 
his proofs on the bunk. 

George Moore, in one of his interminable auto- 
biographies, says, "Proofs always inspire me." 
Probably they do — in an exquisite apartment fur- 
nished with beautiful books and pictures, the plate- 
glass windows throtthng the roar of West London 



220 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 



1 



down to a far-oflF murmur. It is the failure to attain 
to these feHcities that has raised doubts in the writer's 
mind whether, after all, it is worth while. , . . 
Editors have become a myth. An uneasy feeling is 
born in the writer's bosom that he himself is be- 
coming a myth. Such things can happen. He is 
reminded of an extraordinary case of a human being, 
a warm, friendly, seafaring creature, becoming 

suddenly transformed into a 

[At this juncture the writer, propped up in his 
bed-place and becoming at last genuinely interested 
in the recital of his private griefs, is informed by his 
Commanding Officer that the ship is to proceed at full 
speed to Lesbos. A Muscovite destroyer, the 
Turgueniej, abandoned by the Bolsheviki and 
salved by the Allies, has broken her tow-rope and is 
drifting ashore. Immediate assistance is required. 
Pensively wondering how long this sort of thing is to 
go on, and recalling an incident in European history 
known as the Hundred Years' War, the writer gives 
the necessary orders and paces the after-deck as the 
ship drives into the sharp teeth of a typical ^gean 
gale. Experience of these swift, meteorological 
tantrums inspires respect for the seamanship of the 
ancients, who careered round among these islands in 
what were little more than canoes. The Lesbian 
Isle! The Commanding Officer, who has never 
heard of Sappho save in Daudet's novel of that 
name, alludes to a certain amount of kudos which 



REASONS FOR SILENCE 221 

may be extracted from the venture — if she can be 
got off. Sappho? No, the destroyer. No doubt 
the Admiralty will cough up something . . . the 
wind blows his words away. Something.^ Well . . 
substantial. Eh .? The wireless boy, a rangy youth 
with romantic eyes, rustles along the deck Hke a 
leaf and hands the Captain a signal pad. . . . 
" Turgueniej ashore, total loss, return. . . ."] 

Yes, an extraordinary case. Before metempsy- 
chosis set in he was the Navigating Lieutenant of 
the writer's last ship, a seaplane carrier. He might 
be described as an embittered idealist, not quite 
seeing what he had gotten out of his twenty-five 
years' faithful service; not seeing, either, the aston- 
ishing destiny just ahead of him. . . . Had he 
no premonition, that evening when he strolled into 
the empty ward room, where the writer was sitting 
with his novel half written before him? It was 
very quiet. The pilots and observers, noisy chil- 
dren, were ashore skylarking. The Paymaster sat 
in his room reading his only book: Dean Ram- 
say's "Scottish Life and Character." His chuckle, 
as he perceived some aged joke, synchronized with 
the faint rhythm of the dynamo two flats be- 
low. 

The writer had seized the opportunity to bring 
out his manuscript, as a rat brings out a bit of 
cheese-rind and gnaws it on the hearth-rug when folks 
are away. Now and again a destroyer, slipping out 



222 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

of harbour in the darkness, would give a short sharp 
"whup-whup!'' on her siren, hke a terrier's bark. 
The wine-steward's shadow remained motionless in 
his small bar in the passage beyond the open door, a 
curved silhouette bent over a tattered and coverless 
copy of Elinor Glyn's "Three Weeks." The framed 
portrait of King George over the sideboard vibrated 
so that His Majesty appeared to be convulsed with 
sudden laughter, as the other door opened and the 
Navigating Officer entered and advanced to his 
appointed place in the adventure. A tall, stout, 
erect figure of a man, with a sharp, weather-beaten 
visage. His movements had the precise deliberation 
of those accustomed to command. Command! 
Thereby hangs the tale. 

For the novel which lay in a flurry of white sheets 
upon the dark green of the ward-room table was 
entitled "Command: A Study in Patriotism." The 
writer had been preoccupied for some time with the 
psychology of command. He had suffered much 
during his years at sea from the idiosyncrasies of 
commanders. In the idle moments of busy years a 
tale of a man who aspired to command, who ap- 
peared unable to convince others of his fitness, and 
who had wandered into forlorn byways of sensuality 
made its appearance upon many sheets of paper. 
Secretly, of course, as becomes a good deed. And 
it was without any suspicion of its real nature that 
the Navigating Officer sat down, lit a cigarette, rang 



REASONS FOR SILENCE 223 

the bell for the bartender, and drew the manuscript 
toward him. 

And for a long time he neither spoke nor moved, 
save to reach his hand absently toward ash-tray or 
glass of chartreuse — an alert, immobile, enigmatic 
figure. He read on, page after page. The writer 
wrote on, page after page. Some people have this 
mysterious gift — one can write in their presence. 
But of course a man can read faster than any one 
can write except perhaps the far-famed TroUope, 
with his completed page every quarter of an hour, or 
Arnold Bennett, or .... no matter. The 
Navigating Officer finished chapter four, pushed 
the thing away, and rose. He began pacing up and 
down, one hand in his trousers pocket. It was at 
this point that the writer noticed a change. It 
became obvious that his brother officer was labouring 
under some strong excitement, as though he had 
absorbed a potion into his system and it was begin- 
ning to work. His pace quickened, slackened, 
halted. He held up his left hand and examined the 
nails narrowly, as though already suspecting some 
modification of his personality. And then he 
spoke. He said he couldn't understand how the 
writer had learned so much about a shipmate's 
private life. This was denied. The characters in 
*' Command" were imaginary. They had been 
slowly and painfully evolved . . . 

"But dammit, this chap who comes home from 



224 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

the China coast, who had a girl out there and who 
gets engaged at home to a dark girl — why see here, 
even his bank's the same as mine — Anglo-Celestial. 
Dammit, it is me you're writing about! It's my 

ideas. Here, where he says where is it?" He 

ruffled the sheets. '* Where he tells the old man — 
you know. Well, the very words I used once. And 
what gets me is how you found out about the girl in 
England — the one he's engaged to — having a foreign 
strain in her. I tell you it's me. It's marvellous. 
Well, I suppose I must have let it out when I was 
stewed. Rather shirty trick that, what.?" 

Now what interested the writer in this harangue 
was not the accusations — entirely unfounded — 
levelled at him for betraying vinous confidences, but 
the obvious fact that his brother officer was fascin- 
ated by seeing himself in the character in the book. 
Of course he was not very much hke this character, 
save in externals. He had been captured by the 
externals, not being a literary man. He began to 
brood upon his image reflected in the story. He 
would make inquiries as to the probable course of 
events. He indulged in retrospect and would allude 
to his past life in the Orient. By degrees those 
traits in which he differed from the chief character 
in the novel receded. He was ceasing to be a human 
being and becoming a character in fiction! He 
cultivated a grievance until the shadow obscured 
him. Now and again he would emerge to make some 



REJSONS FOR SILENCE 225 

observation as to what **a girl would do" in certain 
circumstances, meaning of course the girl in the story. 
He was very anxious to know whether they married 
eventually, but as this was not known to anybody 
he retired unsatisfied. By degrees his personality 
faded, and the writer was not surprised one day to 
be told that he had gone. "Gone home on leave" 
was the official explanation, but the writer knows bet- 
ter. He has searched the Navy List, but the Navi- 
gating Officer is gone from the Navy List, if he was 
ever there. He has become a myth, a memory of a 
quiet evening, white sheets on a green cloth, green 
chartreuse . . . King George convulsed with 
sudden laughter as the door opens and a character 
walks in . . . 

[At this point the Third Officer (who attends to 
the mails) looks into the writer's cabin, holding back 
the curtain, and remarks, "I shall be sealing up the 
bag in a few minutes. Chief. Have you anything 
to go?"] 



THE IDEA 

Dinner was over, and little glasses of red and green 
liqueurs were being carefully transposed by the stew- 
ards as they withdrew the cloth. Most of us were 
smoking, and a game of chess was beginning at the 
foot of the table. The gramophone was rendering an 
Irish jig, and the Chief Engineer, from Londonderry, 
was incommoding the wardroom servants in front 
of the sideboard with a pas seul of his own invention. 
It was a typical scene. Half a dozen men were laugh- 
ing and talking together at the top of the table, when 
someone suddenly remarked : 

"Oh, I don't think there's much in it, you know, 
if you only get a good idea." 

I looked at the speaker, a young seaplane observer, 
known chiefly to me as a devoted reader of poetry. I 
found, to my surprise, that they were talking of liter- 
ature. Some friend at home had *'made a hit" 
with a story, I gathered, and the talk had focussed 
upon the fascinating subject of an idea. 

*'I have read somewhere," remarked the surgeon, 
filling his pipe, "that there are only nine original 
ideas for a story in the world, and they were all 
discovered ages ago by the Chinese." 

226 



THE IDEA 227 

"You mean the nine Muses," murmured the Fhght 
Commander. 

"Oh no," said the Surgeon, "I mean what I say — 
nine ideas. I forget what they are, but the argu- 
ment of the writer was that all plots fall into these 
nine categories. You can't get away from the nine 
original ideas." 

"Like a cat with her nine lives," suggested the 
Flight Commander. "No wonder magazine stories 
are piffle." 

"I have an aunt who lives at Nine Elms," inter- 
jected the junior watchkeeper, and was suppressed. 

"I don't think you've got it right. Doc," I re- 
marked, moving nearer. "The actual number of 
ideas is, in my opinion, immaterial. Even granting 
only nine original plots, the combinations of nine 
numbers are infinite, I am given to understand by 
the mathematicians. Facts prove that it is so. 
I myself have known men who had ideas to burn, 
as they say." 

"That's all my ideas are fit for . . . to 
burn," muttered the Surgeon. 

"I am convinced," I went on, "that in the matter 
of ideas he who meditates is lost. I used to know 
a man who spent his hfe hunting for ideas." The 
young seaplane observer was watching me, and I 
preserved an aspect of bland abstraction. Without 
betraying any confidences, I was aware that he had 
secret ambitions toward literature. 



228 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

*'This man," I resumed, *'had been for many 
years librarian at a college in London where I was a 
student. His knowledge of literature was as com- 
prehensive as mine was sketchy. He had been at a 
German university and was familiar not only with 
books, but with the art and music of western Europe. 
He had written a short play, on some historical 
subject, which had had a short run in London years 
before I met him. Of course he was much older 
than I, but we had in common a leaning toward a 
Bohemian existence, which ultimately took the 
form of a flat in Chelsea, in the days when artists 
and authors lived along Cheyne Walk, and there 
was a sort of Latin Quarter to be found there. 

"I had a job in an ofiice in the city, and he, of 
course, had to be at the college till nine or ten 
o'clock at night. We used to go to a tavern in 
Knightsbridge and stay till midnight, when we would 
walk down Sloane Street and along the river-front 
to our flat, where the housekeeper had left a cold 
supper spread in our room overlooking the Thames. 
And all the time we ' alked. Whether it was brilhant 
talk or not, I am not prepared to say. The point 
is that this man, with whom I spent a great portion 
of my time, was consumed with a preposterous 
craving to discover what he defined as *an idea for a 
play.' His puny little success with a one-act curtain 
raiser had thrown him slightly out of centre and he 
had been wabbhng ever since. And the curious 



THE IDEA 229 

thing about him was that this obsession kept com- 
pany in his mind with the perfectly irreconcilable 
conviction that 'everything had been done/ 

"He was an accomplished improvisator on the 
piano, and on fine summer evenings our open win- 
dow on Cheyne Walk would be cluttered with quite a 
little crowd of home-going sweethearts and so 
forth, listening to him as he played in the darkness. 
But when I would say: *Why not write it down?' 
he would make a gesture of negation and answer 
that it was no use; everything had been done. He 
would watch me scribbHng away on Sundays, and 
assure me that it was all futile — everything had 
been done. Of course this was in his pessimistic 
periods. At other times he would rouse up and 
discuss the possibility of hitting upon *an idea.' 

"He had what I call a typical misconception of 
the very nature of literature. He seemed to im- 
agine that ideas were like nuggets of gold which 
any one might stumble upon at any moment. He 
was preoccupied with the notion of wealth to be 
obtained from the idea. With all his vast knowledge 
of books this man was for ever looking at literature 
through the wrong end of the telescope. He would 
turn over the most imbecile suggestions for books; 
for instance — a novel in which all the characters 
were wicked, or a novel in which all the characters 
were good and came to a bad end. His desire, you 
see, was not to evolve something out of himself, but 



230 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

to do something superficially different from some 
well-known success. To write because he had to, be- 
cause he would enjoy doing it, never entered his 
head. 

** Don't imagine that he was a fool. On the 
contrary he had an instinct for the genuine which 
was unerring up to the middle of the nineteenth 
century. Here he lost himself and got involved in 
all sorts of mazes. And it was this sudden failure of 
his critical insight to cope with his contemporaries 
which led me one day to compare a man's intellectual 
life with a projectile fired from a gun. Each follows 
a hyperbolic curve which reaches its maximum height 
at a certam period and then begins to decline. Some 
never reach the point where the man himself is 
standing. Some are still flying ahead and are not 
understood by us. Of course, I added, I spoke in 
hyperbole. He was a man of nervous and discon- 
certing movements, gray but not old, and his pale 
eyes had the peculiar glaze of the idealist who is also a 
failure. He made a quick gesture and rapidly 
exclaimed : 

***That's an idea! That's an idea! Now how 
can we work that out?' and he fell into a reverie 
which lasted till the saloon closed. 

**It was the same when I told him that in a story 
I was writing a miser made the discovery that he 
could get his money back in the next world if his 
heirs squandered it in this. "Now there's an ideal'* 



THE IDEA 23 r- 

he burst out, and began walking to and fro with his 
eternal cigarette. *If I could only get an idea,' 
he would mutter. * Something really original . . . 
there's a fortune in it.' He would bump into an 
idea and remain unaware of its proximity. I 
remember when he came down to join me in Chelsea, 
he was very much upset. He had been two years in 
lodgings in Bayswater, kept by a middle-aged 
widow, when suddenly she had come up to his room 
*just as he was thinking out an idea for a play' 
and asked him to marry her. He was in a terrible 
state. He packed his portmanteaus and trunk, 
took a four-wheeler, and came down at once to me. 
He had never heard of such a thing in his life, he 
assured me! He had never done or said anything 
that any one could construe into an advance. It 
took him weeks to get over the shock and return 
to his hunt for an idea. 

*'He was like a traveller through a rich and pleas- 
ant land who is under the illusion of being in a barren 
desert. That is the point I want you to notice, for 
this friend of mine was typical of that period of 
thought in Bohemian London. Oh dear no, he 
wasn't the only one by any means. I daresay 
there were thousands of well-meaning and cultured 
ladies and gentlemen in London in those days who 
were afflicted with the same peculiar perversion of 
vision. They were responsible for the notion spread- 
ing through schools and colleges, suburbs and country 



232 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

towns, that an idea is a nugget of gold to be suddenly 
found in a heap of dirt. Now if you will permit 
me to say so, you are quite wrong. My friend was 
wrong. I don't wish to convey the impression 
that I was a sort of youthful Socrates who amused 
himself by studying the habits of an elderly failure. 
But I never could satisfy myself that his mania 
for an *idea' or an 'original plot' was the right 
i¥ay to go about." 

"Then how do you propose to go about ?" inquired 
the Surgeon. 

''Well, we'll come to that presently. What I 
was going to say was this. If we go back a little 
way in the history of story-writing, we shall find that, 
following on the unique success of Dickens as a 
serialist, a number of other men achieved a somewhat 
similar success without the greatness. That is to 
say, these men followed what they conceived to be 
Dickens's method. They planned interminable ser- 
ials with a central mystery which remained undi- 
vulged until the end, and was supposed to keep the 
reader's tongue hanging out with anxiety. But 
as a matter of fact the anxiety was more the author's 
than the reader's, for the former was often driven to 
the craziest shifts to maintain the agony and ex- 
tricate himself from the difficulties in which he 
found himself. As Oscar Wilde shrewdly and wittily 
remarked of these writers, 'the suspense of he 
author becomes unbearable.' Now, while it is 



THE IDEA 233 

true that Dickens usually had a few mysteries 
in his novels, mysteries which somehow seem 
strangely unnecessary and clumsy to us to-day, 
his success was in spite of, not because of them. 
His followers could not see that, and spent their 
lives devising problems which, to quote Wilde 
again, were not worth solving. 

*'If that were all, the evil would have died with 
them. Unfortunately some of these men became 
editors, and the evil that editors do Hves after them, 
as well as the good. As editors these authors 
estabhshed a mandarinic control over the young 
men who were beginning to write. It gradually 
became impossible to sell a manuscript which did 
not conform to their conception of a story. Not 
only was the number of words fixed, but the whole 
business was reduced to a few rules. Every story 
had to have a *plot.' By plot was understood either 
a love story, a ghost story, or a murder story. The 
story far excellence was one which combined all 
three. I am speaking now of the 'eighties and 
early 'nineties. If you want to know how they 
succeeded, turn over the old magazines in a second- 
hand bookstore and try to read the stories. You 
will discover, to your astonishment, many men who 
have since made their mark as originals, laboriously 
fitting together the sorriest hack-stuff at the com- 
mand of some editor who had become famous in 
the same line. By virtue of their own genius they 



234 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

have escaped; but they are only a few out of the 
scores who Hved and died in the grip of that highly 
organized convention. 

"And the strange and terrible thing about it all 
was that every book produced at that time which is 
still ahve broke every rule that the mandarins 
had made. Even that last infirmity of ignoble 
minds — the happy ending — ^was flouted on occasion. 
But I am not concerned either with the men who 
broke down the walls of this penitentiary, or with 
the men who saw their chance and followed out 
through the gap into freedom. What I want you 
to remember is that the great majority believed 
that story-writing did go by rule, that you could 
learn to do it just as you learned to play the piano 
or ride a bicycle. They paid for their belief with 
their lives, some of them. They lived in garrets and 
wrote stories of beautiful young ladies of high degree 
in love with diplomatists and landowners. They 
burst their poor heads looking for 'plots' and *ideas.' 
They planned happy endings while their own hearts 
were breaking with failure. And it was all so 
futile, so stupidly wrong. The whole trouble lay 
in the fact that they were trying to write without 
in the first place getting any knowledge of life. 
They were so preoccupied with the technical details 
of a senseless conventionahsm that they never be- 
came aware of the Hfe around them. Do you re- 
member the plaintive cry of one of them — *I 



THE IDEA 235 

could be a great poet if I only knew the names of 
things'! 

"The man I have been telling you about was like 
that. New ideas were exploding all round him, 
and all he could do was to shrink into himself and 
mutter that 'everything had been done. All the 
ideas had been used.' It never entered his head to 
take hold and write about the first thing that came 
to hand, to go on writing. It never struck him 
that an idea was a Hving thing, which grows and 
develops and ultimately brings forth other ideas. 
He couldn't see that. I have often thought of the 
last time I ever saw him, early in the war. We 
had been to the terminal to get my baggage, for 
I was to spend the night at his place. He was 
talking of an idea he had for writing a series of 
articles on the dramatists of the seventeenth century. 
I applauded the notion, for he really knew more 
about the seventeenth century than he did about the 
twentieth. But imagine it! Conceive the mental- 
ity of a man who proposed such a thing, with Ant- 
werp falHng, with a British Fleet destroyed off 
Coronel, with every heart in England on fire in a 
gigantic struggle with the powers of darkness! 
Nevertheless I applauded the notion, for he desired 
greatly to earn a few guineas. And as we came 
out of the terminal station into Liverpool Street, 
and he was complaining of the difficulty in getting 
a central idea for each essay, it seemed as if the whole 



236 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

world dissolved in a series of explosions. There 
was a sheet of green flame in front of us and the 
sound as of every window in London falHng in shivers. 
We darted into the station and waited for death. 
It seemed impossible that we could escape. My 
friend collapsed into a fit of ague. Bomb after 
bomb fell and burst with its tremendous detonation 
and he sat there on my grip and muttered, 'My 
God ! My God !' The mothers with children and 
the men who had collected with us on that stone 
stairway, looked curiously at him as he sat shudder- 
ing. I don't think he ever recovered from that little 
adventure. The twentieth century was too much 
for him. I often think of him, now that he is gone, 
wandering in the shades in his fruitless search for 
an idea. Or perhaps he has found one, and is 
spending eternity working it out!'' 

"Well," said the Surgeon, ringing the bell for the 
bartender, "that doesn't seem to get us any nearer 
to the solution. You don't propose that a man 
should die or commit suicide in order to get an 
original idea for a story, do you.?" 

"Not at all. My point is that a young man must 
let his ideas grow, and not be continually rooting 
them up to see how they are getting on. The broad 
difference between us and the old conventionalists 
is this — that while they constructed what they called 
a plot, something like a Chinese puzzle, and fitted 
their highly conventional characters into it, we pre- 



THE IDEA 237 

fer to conceive one or more characters evolved out of 
our own souls by their impact upon others, and leave 
these characters to fashion the story in their own 
way. Just as the realists who followed them were 
not real, so the romanticists themselves were not 
really romantic. The very essence of a romance is 
its fortuitousness, if I may say so. It may be suc- 
cinct or it may be rambling. It may have the clear- 
cut beauty of a jewel or the shadowy elusiveness of 
a dream. It will depend for its authenticity upon 
the genuine quaHty of your mood. But in nine 
cases out of ten the idea, as you call it, is not clearly 
apparent to the author himself until he has gone too 
far to go back. He sees it in a glass darkly and then, 
perhaps, face to face." 

"What'll you have?" asked the surgeon. 



LOST ADVENTURES 

It is a harmless diversion of authors to express a 
weakness for various methods of beginning a story. 
Very few eminent authors seem able to resist the 
distant horseman of G. P. R. James's novels, who 
might have been seen as the shades of night were 
falling. Blessed with perfect faith and eyesight 
one may agree. Others hke what used to be called 
a Proem, a sort of literary shock absorber, a kind 
of intermediate chamber where one is accustomed 
to a change of atmosphere before being transferred 
to the full pressure of the story. It was a fav- 
ourite device of novelists when I was a youngster, 
and I regarded their Proems with aversion because 
they had no ascertainable connection with the story. 
Others are drawn toward the letter form, the first 
chapter, or perhaps introduction, ushering the reader 
into the very innermost shrines of intimacy. Others 
again hke to go head-foremost into the very thick of 
the action. Authors who do this are practical. They 
"get" the reader with a short scene of gun play in a 
Western camp and tell him what the trouble was 
afterward. Shrewd fellows they are! 

But personally the one story I cannot resist is the 

238 



LOST ADVENTURES 239 

story whose first chapter begins with a birth. "David 
Copperfield" is for me the great book of my Hfe. It 
begins on Page One with the simple and majestic 
declaration, 

"I Am Born" 
and I began to read it not very long after I had been 
born myself. Being born, at the time when that 
fat and fascinating volume first came into the nurs- 
ery, was about the only thing I had accompHshed 
without mishap. I said to myself "I, too, have been 
born'' and lay flat on my stomach on the hearthrug 
to pursue the tale anew. There is nothing like a 
start, and being born, however pessimistic one may 
become in later years, is undeniably a start. And 
I defy any one to resist the attractive possibilities of 
a being who has achieved the momentous feat of get- 
ting himself born. 

But as time went on and I read "David Copper- 
field" so many times that whole episodes are graven 
verbatim on my memory, I began to discover a num- 
ber of startling divergences between David's conven- 
tional arrival in England and my own. David, it 
seemed, was a posthumous child, a hard word which 
gave me a lot of trouble in the beginning. Inquiry 
revealed the agreeable fact that I was not posthu- 
mous. No one will ever fathom the extraordinary con- 
crete images evoked in a child's mind by elusive 
abstractions. For some reason the word posthumous 
called up ideas of strange convoluted things seen in 



240 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

Dore's illustrations of Dante's Inferno. Further 
investigations carried on in the family circle elicited 
the fact that I myself was an exasperating child and 
a fit candidate for that grim neighbourhood. I was 
also a child afflicted with innumerable privileges no 
other child had, none of which seemed to do me any 
good. Like most English children of the 'eighties 
I became reconciled to the fact that I was a bad lot 
and only some special intervention would save me 
from an alarming end. 

But at that time I was only remotely interested 
in ends. It was beginnings which preoccupied the 
infant imagination. In due course it was possible 
to visualize the differences between Copperfield's 
beginnings and my own. Copperfield, after getting 
born in a house in Suffolk, achieved felicity by going 
to live in a ship. I, on the contrary, had come out 
of a ship to live in a house. This seemed to me hard 
luck. I seemed to have had all sorts of thrilling 
experiences when I was too young to appreciate them. 
I brooded on this for a good while. I tried to recall 
the irrevocable. In a previous state of existence I 
had been rocked in the cradle of the deep, I had 
weathered storms and seen strange lands from under 
the arched white sails of ships. I had lain in dark- 
ness while the feet of men had stamped on the deck 
overhead and their hoarse calls had come faintly 
through the roaring of the winds and the thunder of 
beam seas. There had been mutinies and madness, 



LOST ADVENTURES 241 

short rations and stern measures, and I had remained 
oblivious to it all. It is not too much to say, pro- 
vided the reader will not misconstrue the remark, 
that at times I wished I had never been born! 

These, however, were passing moods. There 
were compensations, of which in time I availed my- 
self. The house might not be a ship but it was filled 
with pictures of ships, with talk of ships, and oc- 
casionally with the captains of ships. They would 
come home with my father as evening fell, these 
gray-whiskered ship-masters, and the dining room 
would fill with a blue fog as they drank brandy and 
water and smoked their pipes and discussed the one 
subject in which they were interested — ships. In 
this nautical atmosphere I passed my time, merely 
emerging for a few hours each day to go to a school 
where no one knew anything about ships. Indeed 
the ignorance of the boys and masters was, for a 
maritime nation, remarkable. For them a ship was 
a ship — they knew no distinction between a bark, 
a schooner, a brig, or a square-rigger. They were 
unable to define the functions of a spankerboom, 
a cat-head, or a jimmy-green. At home these things 
were household words. Punishment was described 
as a **dose of manila" or *'the rope's end." 

On the walls were oil paintings of ships in full sail, 
in perilous proximity to ugly headlands or in the 
act of running down innocent Oriental craft. Dusky 
photographs, enlarged from daguerreotypes, re- 



242 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

vealed ancient caracks about to be launched or ca- 
reened for scaling, like prehistoric monsters reclining 
amid a forest of bare poles festooned with insecure 
ladders like gigantic climbing plants. And then 
when I had attained the age of six, he for his last 
and I for my first conscious voyage, my father and 
I went to sea. 

Even then the age of sail was on the point of van- 
ishing. The sea captains who had filled our dining 
room with smoke had all "gone into steam." And 
it was on an old tramp steamer out of Rotterdam 
that I began going to sea and writing about it at the 
same time. 

The imaginative memory, however, is an incal- 
culable thing. That voyage was notable more for 
encountering a rich collection of human curios — ship- 
masters, mates, engineers, and ship chandlers in Car- 
diflP. Nautical impressions seem to have had their gen- 
esis in a little smoky cubby-hole of an office in London 
which my father rented in an immense block of 
buildings called Number Twenty-Seven Leadenhall 
Street, on the site of the present Baltic Exchange. 
Up to this shrine we used to go, my tall old father 
and I, several times a week, and there I would spend 
the day. It is a perplexing problem to decide just 
why he took me, for he invariably behaved as though 
he were trying to lose me. I would be left in ex- 
tremely trying situations. More than once he forgot 
me at the tavern where he ate a "two shilling or- 



LOST ADVENTURES 243 

dinary," left me wedged in between a couple of plump 
underwriters and unable to get out of the box to fol- 
low him. Sometimes I would be stranded high and 
dry on the stool of a neighbour's office, whence I 
could not get down without disaster. And once he 
started home without me, while I sat abandoned to 
the three daughters of the house in the old Anchor 
Hotel in the Minories, three fresh-complexioned and 
well-meaning young persons who read to me the sav- 
age old English fairy stories and frightened me into 
a hysterical storm of tears. 

My great friend in these tribulations was the office- 
boy. He was a youth of singular accomplishments, 
all of which he would exercise for my delight. He 
lived in a dungeon containing a safe and a letter 
press, and with a number of hull models on the walls, 
ornaments which impressed me unfavourably by 
reason of their incomplete condition and utter un- 
suitability for saiHng in a pond. My friend the of* 
fice-boy, however, made me forget these things in his 
company. He had a jew's-harp, upon which he 
played ravishing tunes while I sat on the desk and 
incHned my ear to his shoulder. He gave me a 
whistle with which I caused a scandal in the train go- 
ing home. Sometimes, having business down at the 
docks, he would take me with him, and I would be 
transported to an Elysium of loud noises, deHcious 
odours, and a great turmoil of labour. I would be 
taken on board great ships and left to prowl about 



244 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

cabins and alley-ways. What pilgrimages ensued 
along those alley-ways, whose mysterious teak doors 
and swaying curtains would suddenly reveal new and 
astonishing samples of humanity? What smells of 
supreme pungency poured forth from the frowsy 
portals of lazarets and stewards' lockers! What 
languors of repletion followed the banquets of 
raisins and dried apples and ginger beer and damp 
biscuits, banquets specially organized by diplomatic 
minions for '^the Cap'n's little boy"! What ec- 
stasies of pleasure in the boarding of a tug which 
glided away down river to Rotherhithe where, at the 
bottom of an enormous dry dock, I saw my father, 
and wondered how in the world he had got there, and 
how he was going to get out, and what would happen 
to him, and to me, if the water came in suddenly and 
washed him away, like a black beetle in a bath ! And 
better than all, what times of golden glamour when 
my friend the office-boy would have what he called 
*^an 'our orf," and we would wander into Leadenhall 
Market, where he would introduce me to the great 
dogs who guarded the meat with expressions of in- 
credible virtue on their severe and shaggy faces; to 
the cats, with their fur all sawdust; and to the 
parrots who lived, hke Simon Stylites, on the tops of 
pillars, and who uttered raucous irrelevancies to an 
inattentive audience! He was very kind to me, that 
office-boy, and never left me in difficulties. He al- 
ways took me carefully back to the office and called 



LOST ADVENTURES 245 

my father's attention to my clean hands and face 
(after a secret orgy of popcorn purchased near Aid- 
gate Pump), and softened for me in many ways the 
shocks of existence, so that in time I began to be 
reconciled to my lot and no longer regretted my lost 
adventures. 



THE MARKET 

There is a sharp, imperative rap on my outer door; 
a rap having within its insistent urgency a shadow of 
deHcate diffidence, as though the person responsible 
were a trifle scared of the performance and on tip- 
toe to run away. I roll over and regard the clock. 
Four-forty. One of the dubious by-products of con- 
tinuous service as a senior assistant at sea is the habit 
of waking automatically about four A. M. This 
gives one several hours, when ashore, to meditate 
upon one's sins, frailties, and (more rarely) triumphs 
and virtues. Because a man who gets up at say, four- 
thirty, is regarded with aversion ashore. His family 
express themselves with superfluous vigour. He 
must lie still and meditate, or suffer the ignominy 
of being asked when he is going away again. 

But this morning, in these old chambers in an an- 
cient Inn buried in the heart of London City, I have 
agreed to get up and go out. The reason for this 
momentous departure from a life of temporary 
but deliberate indolence is a lady. ''Cherchez la 
femmey' as the French say with the dry animosity of 
a logical race. Well, she is not far to seek, being 
on the outside of my heavy oak door tapping, as al- 

246 



THE MARKET 247 

ready hinted, with a sharp, insistent delicacy. To 
this romantic summons I reply with an inarticulate 
growl of acquiscence, and proceed to get ready. To 
relieve the anxiety of any reader who imagines an 
impending elopement it may be stated in succinct 
truthfulness that we are bound on no such desper- 
ate venture. We are going round the corner a few 
blocks up the Strand, to Covent Garden Market, to 
see the arrival of the metropolitan supply of pro- 
duce. 

Having accomplished a hasty toilet, almost as 
primitive as that favoured by gentlemen aroused to 
go on watch, and placating an occasional repetition 
of the tapping by brief protests and reports of prog- 
ress, I take hat and cane, and drawing the huge 
antique bolts of my door, discover a young woman 
standing by the window looking out upon the 
quadrangle of the old inn. She is a very decided 
young woman, who is continually thinking out what 
she calls *' stunts" for articles in the press. That is 
her profession, or one of her professions — writing 
articles for the press. The other profession is selling 
manuscripts, which constitutes the tender bond be- 
tween us. For the usual agent's commission she is 
selHng one of my manuscripts. Being an unattached 
and, as it were, unprotected male, she plans little 
excursions about London to keep me instructed and 
entertained. Here she is attired in the flamboyant 
finery of a London flower-girl. She is about to get 



248 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

the necessary copy for a special article in a morning 
paper. With the exception of a certain expectant 
flash of her bright black Irish eyes, she is entirely 
businesslike. Commenting on the beauty of an early 
summer morning in town, we descend, and passing 
out under the ponderous ancient archway, we make 
our leisurely progress westward down the Strand. 

London is always beautiful to those who love and 
understand that extraordinary microcosm; but at 
five of a summer morning there is about her an ex- 
quisite quality of youthful fragrance and debonair 
freshness which goes to the heart. The newly hosed 
streets are shining in the sunlight as though paved 
with "patins of bright gold." Early 'buses rumble 
by from neighbouring barns where they have spent 
the night. And, as we near the new Gaiety Theatre, 
thrusting forward into the great rivers of traffic 
soon to pour round its base like some bold Byzantine 
promontory, we see Waterloo Bridge thronged with 
wagons, piled high. From all quarters they are 
coming, past Charing Cross the great wains are arriv- 
ing from Paddington Terminus, from the market- 
garden section of Middlesex and Surrey. Down 
Wellington Street come carts laden with vegetables 
from Brentwood and Coggleshall; and neat vans 
packed with crates of watercress which grows in the 
lush lowlands of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire; and 
behind us are thundering huge four-horse vehicles 
from the docks, vehicles with peaches from South 



I 



THE MARKET 249 

Africa, potatoes from the Canary Islands, onions 
from France, apples from California, oranges from 
the West Indies, pineapples from Central America, 
grapes from Spain, and bananas from Colombia. 

We turn in under an archway behind a theatre and 
adjacent to the stage-door of the Opera House. The 
booths are rapidly filling with produce. Gentlemen 
in long alpaca coats and carrying formidable marbled 
notebooks walk about with an important air. A 
mountain range of pumpkins rises behind a hill of 
cabbages. Festoons of onions are being suspended 
from rails. The heads of barrels are being knocked 
in, disclosing purple grapes buried in cork-dust. 
Pears and figs, grown under glass for wealthy patrons, 
repose in soft tissue-lined boxes. A broken crate of 
Tangerine oranges has spilled its contents in a splash 
of ruddy gold on the plank runway. A wagon is 
driven in, a heavy load of beets, and the broad wheels 
crush through the soft fruit so that the air is heavy 
with the acrid sweetness. 

We pick our way among the booths and stalls 
■until we find the flowers. Here is a crowd of ladies — 
young, so-so, and some quite matronly, and all 
dressed in this same flamboyant finery of which I 
have spoken. They are grouped about an almost 
overpowering mass of blooms. Roses just now pre- 
dominate. There is a satisfying solidity about 
the bunches, a glorious abundance which, in a com- 
modity so easily enjoyed without ownership, is 



250 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

scarcely credible. I feel no desire to own these huge 
aggregations of odorous beauty. It would be like 
owning a harem, one imagines. Violets, solid 
patches of vivid blue in round baskets, eglantine in 
dainty boxes, provide a foil to the majestic blazonry 
of the roses and the dew-spangled forest of maiden-] 
hair fern near by. 

"And what are those things at all.?'' demands my 
companion, diverted for a moment from the flowers. 
She nods toward a mass of dull-green affairs piled on 
mats or being hfted from big vans. She is a cockney 
and displays surprise when she is told those things are 
bananas. She shru gsand turns again to the musk 
roses, and forgets. But to me, as the harsh, pene- 
trating odour of the green fruit cuts across the heavy 
perfume of the flowers, comes a picture of the farms 
in distant Colombia or perhaps Costa Rica. There is 
nothing like an odour to stir memories. I see the 
timber pier and the long line of rackety open-slatted 
cars jangling into the dark shed, pushed by a noisy, 
squeaHng locomotive. I see the boys lying asleep 
between shifts, their enormous straw hats covering 
their faces as they sprawl. In the distance rise the 
blue mountains; behind is the motionless blue sea. 
I hear the whine of the elevators, the monotonous 
click of the counters, the harsh cries of irresponsible 
and argumentative natives. I feel the heat of the 
tropic day, and see the gleam of the white waves 
breaking on yellow sands below tall palms. I recall 



THE MARKET 251 

the mysterious, impenetrable solitude of the jungle, 
a solitude ahve, if one is equipped with knowledge, 
with a ceaseless warfare of winged and crawling 
hosts. And while my companion is busily engaged in 
getting copy for a special article about the Market, I 
step nimbly out of the way of a swarthy gentleman 
from Calabria, who with his two-wheeled barrow is 
the last link in the immense chain of transportation 
connecting the farmer in the distant tropics and the 
cockney pedestrian who halts on the sidewalk and 
purchases a banana for a couple of pennies. 



RACE 
I 

**It is an extraordinary thing," I find myself re- 
flecting, standing up to let the waiter take away 
the luncheon tray, and looking out of the polished 
brass scuttle in a meditative fashion. Coming along- 
side is one of the company's launches with a party of 
passengers. They confirm my suspicion that it is an 
extraordinary thing, this problem of race. 

The door has closed behind the coloured gentle- 
man and his tray, and I continue to look out of the 
window, across the lagoon, which is as smooth and 
shining as a sheet of bright new tin, to the shores, 
rising tier on tier of inviolate verdure, to the blue 
highlands fifty miles away. 

There is a tap at the door; it opens, and Don Carlos 
enters, wishing to know if I am coming in the boat. 

To one brought up in the dense air and congested 
mentality of a very old land, the phenomenon of Don 
Carlos focuses upon his extensive and peculiar fa- 
miliarity with republics and hberty. The staple 
products of his native land are revolutions, panegy- 
rics of Hberty, and methodical volcanic eruptions 
which bury patriots and rebels impartially, and roll 

252 



RACE 253 

black rivers of hot lava over their tin-pot tantrums. 
The principal export, one gathers, too, is talent fleeing 
from an excess of liberty. So he adumbrates in his 
gay boyish fashion, humming "My country, 'tis of 
thee"; though whether he means Costaragua, where 
he was born, or Provence, where his father was born, 
or Spain, where his mother was born, or the United 
States of America, where he is now investigating 
new and startling phases of liberty, he does not say. 
We may assume, however, that his impressions of 
Saxon America are so far favourable, since he is 
determined to remain. 

Some difficulty is encountered when the attempt 
is made to classify him on the ship. In his quality 
of Ariel, he is everything, everywhere, only provided 
there is mechanism to be tended. There is an ele- 
ment of the uncanny in his intuitive comprehension of 
machinery, from the operation of a sextant to the in- 
testines of a brine-pump, a phonograph, or a camera 
lens. Perceiving like lightning, and working like a 
leaping flame, he provides the stolid Anglo-Saxon 
mechanics with a fund of puzzled, indignant thoughts. 
One observes them taking stealthy stock of them- 
selves and debating whether they are awake or 
dreaming, so incredible does it appear to them to be 
bossed by a stripling of one-and-twenty, and, they 
mutter, a Dago. This, one gathers, is not to be 
borne by men whose ancestors stood meekly round 
the village inn while Duke William's hook-nosed min- 



254 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

ions took the names of all the folk for the first edition 
of Doomsday Book. Intolerable for hot-blooded 
gentlemen whose sires proclaimed to a wondering 
world a new scheme of government, and made it 
work by flinging wide the door to all who were willing 
to work. 

And how can one fail to sympathize with them? 
When a man has grown up in a thousand-year-old 
tradition that it will take him seven years to learn a 
trade, he is in no condition to admit the possibilities 
of genius. And for Don Carlos there is no such thing 
as tradition. He had but childish memories of the 
days before the war. While Costaragua cannot be 
said to have no history, what she has is not of a kind 
that can be safely taught in the local schools. He 
approaches our civilizations with the frank eyes of a 
stellar visitor and the all-embracing knowledge of a 
university professor. You must remember his lack 
of tradition, if you are to understand his question 
about history. For he demands to know the use of it 
all. What does it get you? Law, Science, Music, 
Engineering — yes, very fine. But why did he have to 
learn about the Battle of Lepanto, the Council of 
Trent, and the Diet of Worms ? He makes this per- 
tinent query as he pulls energetically at the starter of 
the motor-boat; and any reply is lost in the thunder- 
ous roar of the engine. 

I take the tiller as we rush away from the ship's 
side. For among the many facilities of his career, 



RACE 255 

including the divergent enterprises of electrician, 
turbine expert, timekeeper on a banana farm, 
checker on a coffee plantation, moving-picture oper- 
ator, engine driver, clerk in a government office, 
toolmaker in a shipyard, and all-round marine 
engineer, he belongs par excellence to the gasolene age. 
The internal-combustion engine is to him a famihar 
spirit, if the jest may be pardoned. For on this 
the story, which deals also with liberty and so forth, 
depends. 

I take the tiller as we rush from the ship's side. 
Don Carlos bends over the engine for a few moments, 
adjusting the spark and satisfying himself that the 
circulating waster is performing its functions; then 
he climbs out of the engine-pit and runs along the 
gunwale to the after thwarts, where he sits and 
begins to talk. And the point of the story is the 
destruction of a young and exquisite sentiment in his 
heart. He does not clearly perceive this, and may 
not comprehend its full significance for a good many 
years yet. But it has a pertinent bearing upon the 
aforesaid problem of race, and the genesis of na- 
tionality under the modern conceptions of govern- 
ment. 

As we make the entrance of the lagoon, and the 
ocean wind roars in our ears, and the boat takes her 
first buoyant plunge into an immense opaline swell, 
I endeavour to justify the college professor's infatua- 
tion with the Battle of Lepanto, where, I remark in 



256 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

parenthesis, Cervantes did himself no discredit. 1 
take as an example this very seaboard along which 
we are travelling in a gasolene boat. I point out 
certain low jungle-clad hillocks between us and the 
little white village inside, and I tell Don Carlos how 
one Francis Drake, a hard-bitten English pirate of 
the seventeenth century, came up after nightfall one 
evening and, anchoring, rowed ashore with muffled 
oars and crept through the dense undergrowth 
until, the surprised and sleepy sentry struggling to 
unloose their iron grip from his throat, he and his men 
stood within the shadows of the stockades. 

A grim tale, typical of the times, and the outcome 
of great events and dignified animosities half a world 
away. And Don Carlos laughs, for he bears no 
malice toward the English who flew at the throats of 
his ancestors for so many strenuous years. Indeed, 
one derives a certain consolation from the fact that, 
while the English experience the usual human dif- 
ficulty in loving their enemies, they certainly seem 
to achieve success in making their enemies love them; 
and that is something in a fallen world. He laughs 
and bears no malice. He sits with his hands clasped 
round his knees, looking down meditatively for a mo- 
ment at the spinning shaft, and then suddenly 
startles me by demanding if I have ever been in jail. 

This is so unexpected that, as we get round the 
point and into smoother water, I am at a loss to see 
how the question bears upon my feeble attempts 



RACE 257 

to justify the study of history in a world made safe 
for democracy. A hasty review of an obscure and 
more or less blameless life enables me to disclaim the 
honour. But, it seems, he has. And he explains 
that for three weeks he was a political prisoner in the 
barracks up at San Benito in Costaragua. That was, 
oh, two years ago, and he was nineteen at the time. 
Just before he came to the States. And resting his 
arms on his knees and regarding me with his bright, 
smoked-hazel eyes, he relates his adventures as a 
political suspect. 

It is essential to explain in the beginning, however, 
how he came to be so late in getting any ideas, as 
he calls it, about his country. The fact is, he ran 
entirely, as a child, to machinery. It assumed the 
dimensions of a passion, for he describes his emotions 
on encountering a new mechanism, and they are 
easily identified as a species of divine ecstasy. 

As, for example, when he, a slender, quick-eyed 
schoolboy, stood in front of the Hotel Granada in 
San Benito and devoured with his eyes the first 
automobile ever seen in that remote capital. He 
waited for the owner to come out and start it, with a 
feeling akin to vertigo. And the owner, it appears, 
was an Englishman, a bulky person in knickerbockers 
and a monocle, prospecting, with racial rapacity, 
for gold. He came out and scrutinized the small, 
palpitating being crouched down on its hams and 
peering frantically under the chassis; demanded in 



2S8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

an enormous, grufF voice what the deuce Don Carlos 
was up to. 

"Oh, please, can I see the motor? IVe never seen 
a motor." 

"Why should I show you my motor, eh?" 

"Oh, I do want to look at it, only for a minute!" 

And Don Carlos asserts that he was so worked 
up that he touched the rough tweed sleeve and stood 
on one leg. 

The Enghshman seemed amused at this and asked 
him where he learned his English. In the college, 
eh? Wish to the deuce his college in Oxford had 
taught him Spanish, confound it! Well, suppose 
they strike a bargain, eh? Don Carlos might wash 
the car if he, the owner, let him look at the motor. 
How about it? 

He spoke to the empty air. Don Carlos had van- 
ished into the Hotel Granada, seized a bucket and 
broom, and was dashing back again to start washing 
the car. Never was a car cleansed with such miracu- 
lous efficiency and speed. 

But suppose, said the Englishman, when bucket 
and broom were restored to an indignant kitchen- 
maid, that he now declined to let Don Carlos look at 
the motor. Somewhat to his astonishment, the 
small vivacious body became still, the eyes were cast 
down, and he was informed in a grave voice that 
such a thing was impossible. But why? he insisted, 
keeping his cigarette away from his mouth for quite 



RACE 259 

a while in his interest. Well, remarked Don Carlos 
coldly, an Englishman always kept his promise — 
they were taught so in the college. Were they, by 
Jove! It was, the stranger added under his breath, 
news to him, for Corfield had just been butchered in 
Somaliland and nobody at home seemed to care. 
Always kept their promises, did they? And he 
supposed some infernal professor in the college was 
teaching all these Latin-American kids to regard 
Enghsh promises as sacred, ** giving us a darned 
difficult reputation to live up to, young man." 

Well, here goes! He raised the bonnet of his toil- 
worn car, and Don Carlos stooped in ecstasy to gloat 
over the four hot, dry cyHnders, the fan, the wires, 
the smell of gasolene. Twenty-five horse! He mut- 
ters apologetically to me (he was only a kid, I am to 
remember) that he had got the silly notion into his 
head that there were twenty-five little horses toiling 
away under that hood to pull the car. But I don't 
think it needs any apology. I think it is beautiful, 
and the authentic thought of a child. 

Well, he gazed and gazed, almost glaring in a des- 
perate attempt to fix it all imperishably on his mem- 
ory before the bonnet slowly descended and the vision 
was shut out. Don Carlos says he remembered 
everything so that he could draw it, even the grease- 
spots, and a chip off one of the spark-plugs; and rais- 
ing his eyes to the green shores along which we are 
running, he says that he supposes I do not beUeve this. 



26o HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

On the contrary, I see no reason why I should not 
believe it. I tell him of the boy Mozart, who lis- 
tened but once to the Vatican Mass at Rome, and 
came out to write it all down. 

Without any mistakes? Don Carlos demands 
with sudden, intense energy. No, I say, he had to 
go back and correct one or two notes next day. Don 
Carlos nods and smiles in a mysterious fashion, and 
proceeds. He has another improbable statement to 
make. He says that, as the motor stuttered and 
roared, and the car sprang away into the dust of the 
Calle San Bernardino, he burst into tears. 

And this is the point of the episode. His emo- 
tions as a youth were preoccupied with fascinating 
things like electric pumps, a broken adding-machine, 
learning the fiddle, and dancing with the extremely 
pretty girls of Costaragua. Costaragua itself had 
made no appeal to him. It is what can be called 
a difficult country in more senses than one. It is a 
country of immense tree-clad gorges and cloud- 
capped mountains, with rivers as steep as staircases 
and volcanoes of uncertain temper. It is a country 
where butterflies grow to be a foot across the wings, 
and mosquitoes bite to kill. It is a country with a 
seaboard as hot and undesirable as a West African 
swamp; while inland, at four thousand feet, San 
Benito Hes spread out on a cool and pleasant plateau. 
It is a country, moreover, where revolutions alter- 
nate with earthquakes, and between the two a life 



RACE 261 

insurance policy runs high. And a country destitute 
of external oppressors and internal traditions is at a 
loss to make any profound impression upon a sensi- 
tive youth preoccupied with engines and girls. The 
appeal had to come indirectly. 

From across the world came an immense rumour of 
war, an upheaval so vast that even in distant Cos- 
taragua hfe rocked uneasily. Local English, French, 
and Belgians drew into a group, silent and thoughtful. 
Neighbours with harsh names difficult for Iberian 
tongues to utter held little celebrations from week 
to week as the field-gray hordes rolled on toward 
Paris. And to Don Carlos, buried in a Spanish 
traduction, as he calls it, of Gibbon's "Decline and 
Fall of the Roman Empire," and driving himself 
half crazy in a superhuman effort to understand just 
how a bird uses his wings to get off the ground, was 
suddenly hauled out of his dreams by the news that 
two of his cousins in far Provence had been cited for 
valour, while yet another was dead at Verdun. 

It was like a galvanic shock, because valour and 
death in defence of one's country were to him novel 
conceptions. And they were his kin. He was 
working for the Costaragua Railroad at that time, 
and as he overhauled the rolling-stock he turned the 
matter over in his mind. They were his kin, but 
France was far away. His father had been killed in 
one of the innumerable revolutions of Costaragua. 
And it came upon him with abrupt clarity that dy- 



262 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

ing for one's country was, after all, nothing much 
unless one was prepared to live for it. 

This was not so simple as it may seem to one who 
has been drilled from infancy in the civic virtues. 
In Costaragua, as in most small national aggrega- 
tions, family is of paramount importance. You may 
be poor and work in a picture-house evenings, but 
you do not therefore lose caste as a member of the 
first families. And the tendency was for all these 
gentry, as we would call them in England, to adhere 
to the Liberal faction. So the best Don Carlos could 
do for himself at the time, with his limited knowledge 
of world-politics, was to conceive a very honest 
enthusiasm for the government in power, and indulge 
in a few fantastic dreams of Costaragua as a rich 
and powerful country. The point to remember is 
that, so far as it went, it was a genuine inspiration, a 
solid basis on which a more fortunate turn of events 
might have erected a pure and passionate love for the 
land of his birth. 

And on top of this, as if to confirm him in his new 
ideas, he was ordered one day to drive a special car 
to the coast. It was not merely his consummate 
skill in handling motor cars that singled him out for 
this honour. The railway had an ample supply of 
competent drivers. But they were, many of them, 
tinged with an unfortunate prejudice toward a stable 
government. The great upheaval in Europe had 
caused a number of persons of pronounced radical 



1 



RACE 263 

views to take up their residence in Costaragua. The 
special motor car, a large and richly appointed affair 
in varnished mahogany and red silk curtains, with a 
cab in front for the driver, was destined to convey the 
brother of the President and the Minister for War 
to the coast. It was desirable, therefore, that some- 
one of good family and undoubted fidelity be chosen 
to drive. 

He had made the trip so often that it was nothing. 
The only thing that made this one any different was 
a novel emotion of pride in being chosen to serve 
the Government. Not that he had any ridiculous 
reverence for the President's brother. Everybody 
in San Benito was secretly amused at that heavy- 
jowled, dark-browed, secretive, and pompous per- 
sonage. He had one defect which is intuitively 
divined by the Latin — he was stupid. When a min- 
ister from a foreign power, after a reception, had 
jokingly remarked on the comparative sizes of their 
hats, the President's brother had received with a 
look of blank puzzlement the remark that he had 
a large head. "Of course! I am the President's 
brother!" he observed in bewilderment. Don Carlos 
says the story went round behind the fans of the 
San Benito ladies like a ripple of phosphorescence on 
dark water. 

Well, he was that sort of man. Quite different 
from the President, who was clever in many ways, 
with a pen, with a sword, with a revolver. In his 



264 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

career as President he had frequent recourse to 
all three talents. He was not clever enough, however, 
to dispense with his gloomy brother, who held ob- 
stinately to the view that it was he who had en- 
gineered the coup d'etat that raised the intellectual 
duellist to the throne. He pervaded the social at- 
mosphere of San Benito, posing as a sort of Bismarck, 
and was observed to model his deportment upon that 
eminent political stage-manager. 

This was the illustrious passenger, accompanied 
by a short, animated gentleman with a black, up- 
standing moustache, the pair of them garbed in 
great cloaks and heavy-brimmed hats, who stood 
on the private platform of the terminal station as Don 
Carlos brought the big vehicle to a halt. The Ad- 
ministrador of the line hurried up to open the door 
and hand in the baggage. He himself was going up 
to his farm in the interior for a few weeks' holiday. 
He hoped the trip would be pleasant. The line had 
been cleared of everything in advance. Once past 
Ensenada, where the up mail train was side-tracked 
for half an hour, they had a clear run into Puerto 
Balboa, a hundred miles distant and four thousand 
feet below. 

II 

And now, while we run the boat in toward the 
yellow sands of a small, sequestered beach, backed 
by an impenetrable tropical jungle, and wade ashore 



RACE 265 

with our clothes held high, it is necessary to give 
the urban dweller in a temperate zone some clear 
notion of this railroad over which the youthful patriot 
was to drive his massive Condorcet-model car. To 
an EngHshman, whose railways have the sober per- 
manence and social aloofness of the House of Lords, 
or to an American accustomed to quadruple tracks 
vibrating at all hours to the hammering impact of 
enormous haulage, this Eastern Railroad of Costa- 
ragua gives the same bizarre impression as would an 
impulsive Oriental dancing girl in a quiet New Eng- 
land sewing-circle. 

Not that there is anything scandalous or repre- 
hensible in its beginnings. The track runs quietly 
out of San Benito, between high, Hving palisades of 
green, through the occasional gaps of which you can 
get glimpses of gardens with low houses closely 
girdled by screened verandas. All the houses in 
San Benito are low, sky-scrapers being at an ominous 
discount in a land so insecurely bolted down. The 
houses are low, the roofs light, the doors made to 
swing easily, and the people religiously inclined. 
There is one city, Ortygia, through which we pass 
presently, once an ambitious rival of San Benito — 
which is dreadful to contemplate, for the houses are 
now tortured ruins and the cemetery is full of jostl- 
ing tombs which fell in upon each other as the earth 
split open and crashed, and split again, and then 
suddenly remained rigid, so that the white head- 



266 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

stones sticking out of the riven furrows look like the 
teeth of the grinning jaws of Fate. 

But that is not yet. San Benito is built upon a 
gentle eminence, in the centre of a wide, fertile 
plateau; so that, as you stand at the intersections of 
her broad, pleasant streets, you can see all around 
the ascending rim of the green-clad mountains, with 
a ghmpse to the eastward of that formidable person- 
ality, the crater of Mount Cornaru with his forty- 
mile plume of rolling smoke darkening the sunrise. 

And so, if the reader can figure himself in an air- 
plane for a moment, he might have seen, on looking 
down upon this peaceful country one evening, the 
roof of the big Condorcet bumping rapidly along the 
single track between the gardens and coffee farms, 
like a large and intelligent beetle. 

But, on reaching the rim of the plateau, the 
character of the railroad changes with startling 
abruptness. It plunges into a dark cleft in the 
earth, and begins to twist and squirm until all sense 
of direction is lost. It emerges upon a perilous, 
spidery trestle, which is insecurely pinned to the 
bosom of a thousand-foot precipice. It sHdes 
athwart up-ended landscapes of a green so intense 
that it fatigues the eye like the lustrous sheen of an 
insect's wings or the translucent glazing of antique 
pottery. It rolls rapidly down to the very verge of 
a drop that leaves one spent with vertiginous amaze- 
ment, and turns away into a tunnel, after giving 



RACE 267 

one a sickening and vivid view of a wrecked train 
half submerged in the river below. It becomes 
preoccupied with that river. It returns to those 
appalHng banks with enervating persistence. It 
refuses to be allured by the crumbling yet com- 
paratively safe-looking sides of Mount Cornaru, now 
towering on our left like the very temple of disaster. 
It reaches out on perilous cantilevers and swaying 
suspension-chains, to look into that swiftly rushing 
streak of silver almost lost in the gloom of the tropical 
canyon. It dodges decHvities and protrusions, only 
to dart to the edge again and again. For this is 
the only way to Puerto Balboa, down the valley of 
the Corcubion River. 

And now the reader must imagine night about to 
fall, Ortygia and Ensenada, with its side-tracked 
mail train impatiently tolHng its bell and blowing 
off, left behind, and Don Carlos, in the gloom of his 
cab in front of the Condorcet, stepping on his ac- 
celerator and bolting headlong down the above* 
described permanent way. His orders were to make 
all possible speed — the sort of order which gives him 
great joy. 

There was only one shadow on his mind. He 
was not sure that at full speed he could see a for- 
gotten hand-car in time to pull up. One of the 
captivating habits of the native plate-layer is to 
leave his hand-car on the rails and go away into a 
niche of the rocks to sleep. In the ordinary day's 



268 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

work the cow-catchers, one of which was securely 
bolted to the front of the Condorcet, would send the 
obstruction flying into space, and the journey would 
proceed unbroken. Don Carlos did not desire to 
take that risk with the President's brother. It 
might disturb his equanimity, upon which he set a 
most ridiculous store. But speed must be made. A 
conference on board a steamer lying at Puerto 
Balboa was booked for that night. 

Don Carlos, peering out along the beam of his 
searchlight, which was a long white cone littered 
with enormous moths and startling shadows, went 
ahead. And then, turning into a fifty-yard straight 
at about fifty miles an hour he suddenly saw the 
dreaded hand-car right under him. There was a 
crunch, a jolt, a sparkle of metal crashing against 
metal, a shiver of glass, and the hand-car, game to 
the last, before shooting away and turning gracefully 
end over end into oblivion, hfted the front wheels 
of the Condorcet, so that the large and richly ap- 
pointed affair waddled and reeled into the soft earth 
of the embankment, and halted. 

Halted just in time, Don Carlos admits. He had 
no qualms. That is one of his characteristics — 
control. He darts at once, in a case of danger or 
difficulty, to the only possible means of recovery. 
He hopped out of the cab and, unhitching a thin and 
pliant steel cable from where it hung, he began to 
seek a purchase. He found it in an ebony tree not 



RACE 269 

far away, took a bend round it, rove the shackle 
through the dead-eye of a small barrel fitted to the 
Condorcet's rear axles for haulage purposes, and 
running back to the cab, started the engine. The 
wheels began to scutter and slither, the wire-rope 
slowly wound itself on the revolving barrel, and the 
heavy car began to crawl upward toward the track. 
To take fresh hold, to haul out a couple of ramps 
and lever the car into position so that one more 
jerk astern settled her on the rails with a bump, 
was the work of a few moments. And then a 
perspiring Don Carlos bethought him of his pas- 
sengers. Thus far they had remained in enigmatic 
silence within the red silk curtain of the car. Don 
Carlos pulled open the door and peeped in. The 
Minister for War was sitting up, holding on with 
frantic energy to an ornate arm-strap. The Presi- 
dent's brother was lying perfectly still, on his face, 
his head under the seat, his shoes, large number elev- 
ens, with the soles close by the door. Don Carlos 
pulled tentatively at one of these shoes; the owner 
gave a sudden hysterical wriggle and sat up, holding 
to his breast a bleeding finger. Don Carlos was 
rather alarmed. He inquired respectfully if the 
gentlemen were hurt, and informed them that all 
danger was past. 

''We are not killed," said the military one with a 
pious aside. 

*T have injured my finger," said the President's 



270 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

brother with Bismarckian brevity. **There must 
be an inquiry into this affair/' 

*'But it is all over," suggested Don Carlos. 

**Not at all/' observed the President's brother. 
"It is only beginning — at the inquiry." 

It is not the way of Don Carlos to argue in this 
fashion. He has not the mentality to brood on 
what is past. He slammed the door, making both 
of his passengers jump, climbed into the cab, switched 
on his side-lights, and started off once more. An 
hour later, the car rolled into the station at Puerto 
Balboa, and Don Carlos stretched himself out on 
the red plush cushions vacated by the President's 
brother, and slept hke a top till dawn. 

And that, in the ordinary course of events, would 
have closed the incident, but for the attitude of the 
President's brother. That austere and suspicious 
statesman was not of the mental cahbre to gauge 
accurately or justly the eager and swift-witted lad 
who had retrieved the situation. He was afflicted 
with a political cast of mind. He saw a sinister and 
deep-laid plot to assassinate the President's brother 
and chief military adviser. He brooded upon this 
idea until he saw the whole of Costaragua aquiver 
with hostile designs. He returned in a steam- 
hauled armoured car, which got derailed near Ortygia 
and nearly killed him in real earnest, the track 
having been disturbed by a large mass of rock 
tumbhng five hundred feet and smashing a culvert. 



RACE 271 

He summoned the Chief of Police as soon as he was 
once more safe in San Benito, and ordered the arrest 
of Don Carlos as a poHtical suspect. 

There was a great to-do, he assures me, in his 
home, when they came for him. He was with his 
mother and sisters, and they began to weep. His 
own feehngs seem to have crystalHzed into a species 
of contempt for the stupidity of the whole business. 
That, I fear, is his weakness. He cannot credit the 
sad but immovable fact that the majority of people 
are not at all clever, that our civilization tends to 
put a premium on mental density and folly. And 
when he was finally incarcerated in the calabozo 
behind the Government Buildings, he sat down and 
began to think and think. 

Ill 

We lay there on the narrow strip of hot white sand, 
between the dense green wall of the jungle and the 
gHttering blue sea, and stared up into a flawless 
sapphire sky. And our thoughts, helped out by a 
lazy comment or two, were on these lines: Do our 
governors know as much as they should about 
governing? Or put it this way: Doesn't it seem as 
if the tendency of our Western notions is to engender 
useless bitterness in the hearts of the young, the un- 
sophisticated, and the guileless ^. Neither of us has 
any very clear ideas on the subject. He, the Latin, 
is the more logical. '^What do you want government 



272 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

at all for?'' he demands harshly; and there is a long 
silence, broken only by the soft kiss of the waves 
on the sand and the breeze stirring the tops of the 
mahogany trees and cocoanut palms. 

In time, of course, he will see why we want govern- 
ment at all. He will see many things as he goes on. 
He may even forget the animosity born of those three 
weeks in jail. But the new and beautiful conception 
of self-dedication to his country was killed and can 
never be recalled. He will always be suspicious of 
political motives. His virtue will be without roots. 
That, I take it, is the problem of to-day. We have to 
provide a soil in which all these transplanted virtues 
can strike root. We have to devise a scheme that 
will prevent the spirited youth of the land from 
sitting down in bitterness, to think and think. 

Of course, it must not be supposed that the son of 
a good family was permitted to languish in prison 
without comment. But, for the time, the Presi- 
dent's brother had it all his own way. He showed 
his damaged finger and congratulated the Liberals 
on having nipped a dangerous conspiracy in the bud. 
Efforts to reach the Administrador were futile, he 
being high up in the interior beyond rail or wire. So 
Don Carlos sat there and formulated his plans. He 
might be shot, which worried him not at all. But if 
he got out, he would go away. That was decided for 
all time, as he sat there thinking of the immense 
number of fools in the world. His mother came to 



I 



RACE 273 

see him, and went away frightened. There was a 
meeting of "the family," mother and two daughters, 
to discuss what should be done. 

It is strange to hear from him, as he hes on the hot 
sand, the reasons for their concern, and his views of 
"the family. ' "I support them,'' he remarks gravely, 
"and so they have a right to know my decisions.'' 
While I am digesting this somewhat unusual 
filial attitude, he goes on to describe the Admin- 
istrador's sudden return, the telephone calls, carried 
on in shouts, between the railroad office, the police- 
office, and the President's house. And shortly 
after, Don Carlos, contemptuous as ever of stupidity, 
walked out and went home to his family. The Ad- 
ministrador was able to do this because the President 
had married his wife's niece and the Chief of Police 
was his cousin. 

He came round to the house while the family were 
in council and announced his intention of giving Don 
Carlos a job on the coast. The President's brother 
had been advised by his physician to go into the 
country. Don Carlos dechned the job on the coast. 
He said all he wanted of anybody was a ticket to 
the United States. The Administrador thrashed his 
polished leathern gaiters with his cane and looked 
very hard at the sullen youth in front of him. He 
asked if Don Carlos knew what would happen to him 
if he did go to the United States. The boy said he 
did not know, and did not care so long as he went. 



274 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

Well, he, the Administrador would tell him what 
would happen. "You," he informed Don Carlos, 
pointing his cane at him, "will be a millionaire inside 
of ten years." 

And immediately I conceive an immense respect 
for this bluff creature of Latin-American poHtics, 
because he has had the vision to see what he had 
there before him. 

Don Carlos looks at him and waits for the rest of 
the oration, merely murmuring, "And .?" 

"And you will abandon your native Costaragua for 
ever," continues the Administrador. 

And that, says Don Carlos as we resume our 
journey along the coast, was true anyhow. He 
went to the United States, or rather New York, and 
he plunged into the life of the city with the naive 
egotism of a traditionless expatriate. Any idea that 
opportunities imply responsible allegiance is not 
yet born. When I mention in passing that the 
Chief Executive at the White House is far from being 
what is called wealthy, he looks incredulous and 
inquires, "What's he president for, then ?" But as we 
speed round a green headland, which conceals the 
mouth of a river, and as we start on our way up 
this river, I ask Don Carlos just why he pre- 
fers the States to his native Costaragua or the 
neighbouring Republic of Contigua. After all, I 
argue with the illogical folly of the English, he must 
have some feeling of love for the land where he was 



RACE 275 

born and grew up. Suppose, for instance, Contigua 
declared war on Costaragua, would he not take the 
first boat back home and offer himself as a sacrifice 
to his country? Would not Costaraguans the world 
over collect in great seaports, and lie and smuggle 
and scheme to get themselves home to enlist? 

He is silent for a while, as the immense vertical 
green walls of the gorge, through which the river 
runs, close round us. And then he says soberly that 
a country Hke his does not get you that way. He is 
speaking a foreign language, one must remember, 
and he turns over various unsuitable phrases to hold 
his meaning. It is different. It is, very much of it, 
like this; and he waves his hand toward the shores. 

The river winds and winds. High up above the 
towering cliff of eternal verdure gleams a solid blue 
sky like a hot stone. We are in a green gloom. The 
river, fabulously deep, flows without a ripple, like a 
sheet of old jade. There is no movement of bird or 
tree or animal. One is oppressed by the omnipotent 
energy of the vegetation which reaches down from its 
under-cut banks as if seeking to hold the very water 
from flowing away. And the crazy notion takes 
hold of one's mind that this sort of thing is not 
conducive to sanity, or morality, or patriotism, or 
any of the funny old-fashioned ideas that grow rather 
well in our northern air. One begins to understand 
what Don Carlos means when he says it does not 
get you that way. 



276 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

And then I poke him up with something he has 
forgotten. I lead him on to see how he and his 
contemporaries are in the grip of machinery. He 
even learned Enghsh composition by means of 
lecture-records on a phonograph, a hoarse voice 
blaring at him, out of a black iron box, selections 
from Keats and Shelley. There is something metal- 
lic in his voice even now as he repeats from memory — 

**Hail to thee, blithe spirit, 

Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven or near it 

Pourest thy full heart," — 

and growing cautious as he approaches the last Hne 
with its * 'unpremeditated art." Well, he is satisfied 
machinery can do everything. His mind already 
plays about unsolved problems of mechanism. All 
right, I concede. And now will he tell me, as a 
favour, what are we all going to do, later, when the 
fuel gives out.? 

As we approach the ship in the darkness and 
figures come to the rail to see us arrive, he falls silent, 
and I chuckle. After all, it is up to him and his Hke, 
clever young supermen, to get us out of the hole 
they have got us into, with their wonderful inven- 
tions. We dunderheads can go back to keeping 
chickens and writing poetry and watching the sun- 
sets over blue hills, and we shall be content. But 
when the fuel runs out, and the machines run down, 



RACE 277 

and the furnaces are cold and dead, and the wheels 
stop turning, what then, O wonderful youth, what 
then? Will you harness volcanoes and the tides? 
Will you contrive great burning glasses, and turn the 
alkali deserts into enormous storage batteries? or will 
you fly away in planes to some other planet where 
there is an abundance of fuel and no fools at all? 

At which Don Carlos laughs and says I have 
plenty of ideas. That, indeed, is his solution of the 
problem. He is not afraid so long as we continue to 
have ideas. 

And so I leave him at the gangway and climb up to 
the smooth, brilliantly lighted decks, where the 
ladies and gentlemen of many races recline in deck- 
chairs, or promenade to and fro. There is no doubt, 
I reflect, that the Administrador's prophecy will 
come true. He will be rich by virtue of his ideas, 
and a leader of men by virtue of his personality. 
He is for ever dissociated from us, who toil and fail 
and toil again, until we achieve some pitiful travesty 
of our dreams. He functions, as we say, perfectly. 
But what will he do, I wonder, when the fuel of life 
runs down? 



THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 

It was Francis Grierson, some years ago, in a 
brief article in the New Age, who first called at- 
tention to the very remarkable qualities of a book 
called "The Nigger of the Narcissus," just then 
published by Heinemann at a shilling. It was a 
slim, scarlet, easily held book, designed to read in 
bed, pack in a grip, lend to a friend, or sHp in the 
pocket against a rail journey in the middle of the 
day, when the morning paper had been read and the 
evening journals were not yet on the stands. It 
may have been by design that this article came 
out just at that moment, for Heinemann was an 
admirable tactician. Bad literature was abhorrent 
to him, as may be seen by the books bearing his 
imprimatur; but he doubtless saw no reason why a 
man who pubUshed fine books should not let it get 
about, or should refrain from mentioning it in a 
friendly way. It may be remarked that a number 
of English pubhshers at that time were in the habit 
of issuing books in a manner that can only be des- 
cribed as virtuously surreptitious. They did good 
by stealth. It would not do to say that any house 
ever pubhshed a book without informing its shipping 

278 



\ 



THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 279 

department, but it amounted to that in the long run. 
Mr. Heinemann was not that sort of pubUsher. 
Francis Grierson's article appeared in the New 
Age; the sHm red book appeared in the book stores; 
and a new Hght shone before the present writer. For 
the first time in his Hfe he became aware of the 
existence of a writer named Conrad. 

It was an extraordinary experience. It was also a 
very chastening one. For the present writer had 
not only written but published a book of his own, 
dealing with the sea and with seamen. He had 
grown up in a genuine tradition of the mercantile 
marine. Sea captains had been so close to him all 
his life that he accepted them as part of the sur- 
rounding landscape. A long period of literary and 
artistic gestation in Chelsea had somewhat alienated 
him from the rich humanity of his seafaring relatives. 
And here in "The Nigger of the Narcissus" he found 
them again transfigured to heroic dimensions, like 
the sombre and enormous shadows of grown-ups on 
the nursery wall. 

It was in Glasgow on an evening in late summer 
that the present writer walked along Sauchiehall 
Street and, turning down Radnor and Finniestonn 
streets, entered the Queen's Dock, where his ship 
lay. *'The Nigger of the Narcissus" was under 
his arm. The rays of the setting sun still threw a 
twilight and roseate glamour over the interminable 
ridge of the Hills of Old Kilpatrick; and with the 



28o HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

story of the "Nigger" yet vibrating in his brain, he 
made his way up the gangway and descended the 
short ladder to the iron deck of the elderly freighter. 
It is not too much to say that he regarded her 
shapely old hull and comfortable quarters with 
profound affection. Built some fifteen years before 
for the nine-knot Australian trade, she was now 
relegated to the shorter voyages to the Mediter- 
ranean. We had been a long time together, com- 
mander, mates, engineers, including the donkeyman, 
the carpenter, and the engine-storekeeper. The last 
three were much more Hke the characters in a dream 
play than quick active seamen. The donkeyman 
was a Turk and lived in a sort of solitary and im- 
maculate retirement in a three-cornered cabin in the 
forecastle. The carpenter was a Norwegian, and 
haunted the steering-house aft, where he shut himself 
up and fashioned models of fabulous sailing ships. 
The storekeeper, who owned to the entirely inad- 
equate name of Frank Freshwater, was a wilKng 
and diminutive EngHshman with a large nose and an 
immense military moustache. He was known to 
speak to both donkeyman and Chips, and in fact may 
have been created for the sole purpose of communicat- 
ing between them; but even that degree of loquacity 
dried up on nearing Glasgow. He was the sad 
proprietor of a ferocious virago who would appear on 
the quay with miraculous promptitude the moment 
the gangway slid over, and wait relentlessly for him 



THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 281 

to appear. He never did appear, it is necessary to 
add. The whole ship's company became enthusiastic 
sporting accessories to the fact of poor old Fresh- 
water's unobtrusive escape, while some hardened 
married man goaded the virago to paroxysms of 
absurd rage, until the dock policeman walked stol- 
idly in our direction, preening his moustache. 

And the principal bond between all of us there on 
that ship was a very honest liking for the Chief. The 
Turk once said to the present writer who was second 
engineer at the time, *'Z^ cheef, ee iz my fazzer" — 
and was so prostrated with that display of dramatic 
and emotional volubility that he did not speak again 
for a fortnight — unless he talked to himself. To 
Frank Freshwater the Chief presented another and 
equally admirable facet: **One of the truest men 
who ever stood in shoe-leather." Frank's estimate 
is quoted because it was a very accurate description. 
The Chief was just that. And as the present writer 
came aboard with "The Nigger of the Narcissus" 
under his arm, he beheld the burly form of the Chief, 
standing by the door of the port alleyway, stripped to 
the waist, his large, pale, hairy arms folded, his bosom 
screened from view by his patriarchal beard, smoking 
a cigarette in the end of a long black holder. 

"Well," said he, taking the holder from his Hps 
and looking down at the great curve of his abdomen, 
"did you have a good time.^" 

Simple words, expressing a simple kindly considera- 



282 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

tion; yet by virtue of the magical tale just read, the 
present writer saw those words in a new and enchant- 
ing Hght. He saw perhaps for the first time in his 
literary life the true function of dialogue as a resonant 
and plangent element through which the forms and 
characters of men can be projected upon the retina of 
the reader. He became aware of a more subtle music 
in the very shape and timbre of the long-familiar 
phrases. And behind the amiable superior and valu- 
able shipmate he suddenly saw that quiet, attentive, 
bearded man as a character in a book, the uncon- 
scious victim of a future work of art. 

This is a great stride in life — to get behind the 
switchboard, as one may say, and see even for a brief 
illuminating moment the various resistances and in- 
sulations, the connection to earth, without which 
one's impact upon humanity is a floating foolish pose. 
The author who does this for you is for ever memor- 
able, quite apart from his intrinsic value to the 
public. 

I said, "Yes, I had a good time.'' And I added 
with a curious feeling of diffident exultation, **I have 
a book here I would like you to read. It seems to me 
rather good." 

He took it and at once made that faint and some- 
what vague gesture which invariably accompanied a 
gentle murmur of apology about his glasses. Turn- 
ing to the low door leading to his room, we passed in. 
There was no dynamo on that ship, and a study- 



THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 283 

lamp with a brown shade stood on a httle desk by 
the settee. Adjusting a pair of spectacles on his 
nose, the Chief opened the book and began to read the 
title-page. He stood there — a remarkable nude 
figure with his shining bald head and venerable 
beard — holding the volume at arm's length and 
looking down through his glasses with severe atten- 
tion. The first page and the second were read and 
turned, and he never moved. 

So I left him and went round to my cabin on the 
starboard side. The ship was moving under the 
coal-tips early next morning, and it was due to this 
that some time after midnight I was still about, and 
noticed the Hght still burning in his room. I went in. 
He was standing there turning the last immortal 
pages. He had put on an old patrol coat and had 
buttoned it absently over his beard. I have often 
thought that Conrad must have met him somewhere: 
he is so exactly presented in "Heart of Darkness" as 
the amiable engineer of the river boat who put his 
beard in a bag to keep it clean. The discerning will 
recall that person's bald head, whose hair — Conrad 
whimsically observes — had fallen to his chin, where 
it had prospered. He lowered his head and looked at 
me over his glasses as I made some professional 
remark, and laid the book down. 

"A funny thing," he observed in his quiet precise 
voice. "This nigger says a girl chucked the third 
engineer of a Rennie boat for him." He stroked his 



284 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

beard with a broad powerful palm. "You know, / 
was third of a Rennie boat in my young days." He 
meditated for a moment and added, "That book 
makes you feel, somehow." 

A notable reflection. 

And as time went on it became a habit of the pres- 
ent writer to experiment on his shipmates by noting 
their reactions to the works of Conrad. The point to 
remember is that, neglecting certain easily explained 
failures, men reacted in direct ratio to their integrity 
of character. The cunning, the avaricious, and the 
ignoble are not admirers of Conrad. There is some- 
thing in the style and the spirit which reaches surely 
and inexorably down into a man's moral resources 
and sounds them for him. To those who in the 
jargon of the red-blooded fraternity want a story, it 
is to be feared our author does not appeal. This was 
exemplified by "Typhoon" which was tried upon a 
naval reserve oflRcer, a brisk efficient resourceful 
young man with an acute "examination brain." His 
criticism was brief and emphatic. "You could 
write the whole story on a couple of sheets of fools- 
cap," he grumbled. "There's nothing to it; too far- 
fetched as well." He shut the book with a sudden 
snap of fingers and thumb, and passed it back, 
promptly forgetting the whole affair. He is neither 
cunning, avaricious, nor ignoble, but he is afflicted 
with the modern conception of efficiency. For him 
romance lies in the past of highwaymen, knights in 



THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 285 

shining armour, and Machiavellian cardinals of in- 
conceivable obliquity. 

To a writer who has indulged his humour by 
watching seafaring folk in their reactions as men- 
tioned above, the collected prefaces which Conrad 
has written for the Sun Dial edition of his works, 
under the title of **Notes of My Books," have a 
very special interest. They tell with a direct and 
disarming candour the authentic origin of the tales. 
The troublesome enthusiast who is for ever seeking 
the fiction which is "founded on fact" will get 
small comfort here, for here are the facts. It is 
the penalty of success in the fictional art to illumine 
the obscure experiences of worthy members of the 
public and convince them that such and such an 
affair "actually happened." These folk are very 
timid at trying their wings. They dread leaving 
the solid earth behind. It is a positive comfort 
to them to feel that the things which have touched 
their hearts are only the bright shadows of the hard 
actuahties under their feet. The chief engineer 
to whom I presented "Lord Jim" (not the beloved 
and bearded personality described above), was an 
interesting variant of this. A hard-bitten portly 
individual, an excellent officer, and well read withal, 
he deprecated in its entirety the Conradian philos- 
ophy and literary method. Yes, he knew the story 
out East, as did everybody else. A ship called the 
Jeddah, it was, which ran over a sunken derelict 



286 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

and broke her back. The officers left her. Who 
wouldn't? A million chances to one against her 
lasting ten minutes. Conrad had idealized the 
mate Jim, that was all. 

That was the word he used : ** idealized." He was 
a blunt Englishman, with his emotions planted al- 
most inaccessibly deep down among his racial pre- 
judices. He objected really to anybody's discussing 
the fundamental motives of man. It was not the 
thing to do. Possibly the slight imponderable 
irony which almost always creeps into Conrad's 
descriptions of seagoing engineers, was responsible 
for my friend's irritation. Leaving out the worthy 
Solomon Rout in *' Typhoon," Conrad seems to have 
been something less than fortunate in his engineer 
types 

At the other end of the scale the present writer 
preserves a most lively memory of his introduction 
to ** Youth" by the third mate of a beef ship running 
into London River, An alert and cheerful college 
boy who had been through the hard gruelling of an 
apprenticeship in sail, he was at that stage of the 
twenties when one is equally interesting to the women 
of thirty, the men of forty, and the mothers of 
fifty. And it was he who, as we were passing the 
watch below in friendly comparison of books read, 
suddenly lighted up all over his fresh ruddy features 
and said in a glow of delicious enthusiasm, "I say, 
haven't you read *Youth'? My word, but you 



THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 287 

must read *Youth'! It's ripping! The finest tale 
I ever read in my life!" 

And he stuck to it in spite of anything the others 
might say. He had been caught by the extraordin- 
ary glamour of the thing, the superb simpHcity 
of the narrative, the cumulative power of the finale. 
He would never be the same being again after reading 
that tale. Here we have an achievement for which 
there is no adequate name save genius. 

Other books there are of Conrad's which enshrine 
no memories of a shipmate's admiration or dislike. 
There is "Nostromo" for instance, that little-read 
masterpiece of creative literature. Ordered from 
London during the war, and read while voyaging 
between Port Said and Saloniki, this "tale of a 
seaboard" made the monotonous business of naval 
transport seem a dim and ridiculous fragment 
of unreality. The huge size of the canvas, the sweep 
and surge of the narrative, the sudden reveaHng 
phrases, the balanced cadence of the sentences, the 
single harp notes calling to some obscure emotion 
of the soul — all these made their appeal and created 
an imperishable memory. 

And there is a point it is pertinent to make here, 
in view of this new volume of "Notes on Life and 
Letters": that it is doing Conrad a disservice to 
characterize him as " a sea writer." One does not 
call Turner a sea painter. The highest genius does 
not shackle itself with such very trivial restrictions. 



288 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

Some of the finest of Conrad's tales have nothing 
whatever to do with the sea, notably "Heart of 
Darkness," "Under Western Eyes," and "An 
Outcast of the Islands." If it be not misunderstood, 
the present writer would like to say that going to 
sea will have had very little influence upon the final 
verdict of posterity upon Conrad's work. His 
philosophy is his own and fundamentally antago- 
nistic to the ideas of most seafarers. His technical 
method is provoking to seamen, who have a very 
diflPerent fashion of telling a tale — as different 
in fact as the average ship master is from CharHe 
Marlow. There is, as Conrad him^self remarks, 
nothing speculative in a sailor's mentality. The 
meaning of his story is on the outside. Conrad 
is entirely speculative. He tells the story almost 
in absence of mind. He will bring you right up to a 
moment of almost unendurable dramatic intensity 
and then devote half a dozen pages to depicting 
the psychological phenomena attendant upon it. 
We who are gathered here consider the labour 
justified by the unique results. The red-blooded 
folk whose conception of drama is as rudimentary 
as the struggle to enter a crowded subway train, 
are naively infuriated when deprived of their precious 
story. There are classes of novel readers who will 
not have Conrad at any price. They lack patience 
and are not compensated by any perfection of prose 
diction which may inadvertently come under their 



THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 289 

notice. For them the donkeyman, the carpenter, 
and storekeeper, mentioned earher in this essay, 
were simply taciturn nonentities. For us they 
are a bizarre trinity of lonely souls floating in mys- 
terious proximity through a universe of ironic 
destinies. For us they are the indistinct shadows 
of men like Axel Heyst, Captain MacWhirr, and 
Falk. 

The present writer feels a special debt of gratitude 
for these "Notes on Life and Letters" since they in- 
clude a number of fugitive pieces, occasional contri- 
butions to reviews, which he missed at the time, 
owing to being in some distant harbour. There 
is the very indignant disgression, for example, upon 
the loss of the Titanic. And it is worthy of note 
that when he deigns to speak of his contemporaries, 
Conrad is exasperatingly unaware of the existence 
of the gods in the best-selling universe. He has 
much to say, on the contrary, of Henry James, of 
Dostoyevsky, and of Anatole France. These articles 
are exactly what one would expect from the author: 
urbane and dignified criticism of one artist by an- 
other. Conrad has been honoured similarly by 
H. G. Wells, whose review of "Almayer's Folly" 
and "An Outcast of the Islands" was a masterpiece 
of critical insight. 

Yet one returns again to the Prefaces. One has 
here the feeling of being shown round the studio by 
the master. This, he seems to say, is exactly how 



290 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

it was done. He deprecates gently, and one hopes 
sincerely, the formidable accretion of legendary ro- 
manticism which has collected about his career. 
We are to beheve that these people in his books 
never actually existed — they are the magnificent 
fabrications of the author's brain. A hint here, a 
whispered conversation there, a newspaper yarn 
over yonder — and lo! fifteen years later Willems 
or Falk or Razumov or Nostromo emerges from 
obscurity and assumes an enigmatic attitude of 
having existed since the dawn of time. This will 
be very disappointing to those prosaic enthusiasts 
who like to hear that all great characters in fiction 
have their originals in history. And the present 
writer must confess he had weakly imagined that 
*'The Secret Agent" was the happy result of a long- 
past familiarity with the strange folk who hang 
around legations and live in disreputable lodgings 
off Greek Street or the Vauxhall Bridge Road. 

And yet of what avail are these prying specula- 
tions .f* There seems still to survive in us much 
of that ghoulish predilection of the Middle Ages for 
relics. We will go to a museum to look with venera- 
tion upon the authentic trinkets of the illustrious 
dead. So in these '^Notes on My Books" one 
must resist the temptation to linger over the per- 
sonal revelations with vulgar curiosity. They are 
for our information and comfort, but they hold no 
anodyne for pain or elixir of youth whereby we may 



li 



THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 291 

regain our lost illusions. They must in no case divert 
our attention from one preface in particular — a 
preface set apart by virtue of its history and inten- 
tion. It would be much more just to call it the 
confession of faith of a supreme master of prose. 
The present writer is unable to speak of it without 
emotion. It enshrines in resonant and perfect 
phrases the secret convictions of his heart. It is 
the crowning gift of a great artist; and when one 
pauses to condense in a few words an adequate 
comprehension of that artist's work, one turns 
instinctively to this long-suppressed preface to 
**The Nigger of the Narcissus." As one reads, one 
recalls. The literary art, he says, 

. . . must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, 
to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of 
music, which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete 
unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and sub- 
stance; it is only through an unremitting, never-discouraged 
care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can 
be made to plasticity, to colour and that the light of magic 
suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant 
over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, 
worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage. 

And again, of the writer: 

He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the 
sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, 
and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with 
all creation — and to the subtle but invincible conviction of 
solidarity that knits together the lonliness of innumerable hearts, 
to be solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in 
illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which 
binds together all humanity — the dead to the living and the living 
to the unborn. 



292 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

So he sums it up. Beyond this, in placing the 
bounds of the author's art, it is impossible to go. 
One is permitted only to add, for the purpose of 
supplying a fitting conclusion, the final paragraph. 
The humble and industrious among us may smile 
incredulously, yet toil on with a better heart, when 
they read that our aim should be 

. . . to arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy 
about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the 
sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding 
vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make 
them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile — such is the aim, 
difficult and evanescent and reserved only for a very few to 
achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate 
even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished 
— behold! — all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, 
a sigh, a smile — and the return to an eternal rest. 



A PORT SAID MISCELLANY 



There has come upon us, suddenly, one of those 
inexphcable lulls which make the experienced seafarer 
in the Mediterranean recall bygone voyages out 
East. It is as if the ship had run abruptly into 
some sultry and airless chamber of the ocean, a 
chamber whose cobalt roof has shut down tight, and 
through which not a breath is moving. The smoke 
from the funnel, of a sulphurous bronze colour, even 
while our trail yet lies somnolent in a long smear on the 
horizon, now goes straight to the zenith. The iron 
bulwarks are as hot as hand can bear, as the wester- 
ing sun glows full upon the beam. Under the awnings 
the troops lie gasping on their rubber sheets, enduring 
silently and uncomprehendingly, like dumb animals. 
Far ahead, the escort crosses and recrosses our 
course. Still farther ahead, a keen eye can detect 
a shght fraying of the taut blue line of the horizon. 
Signals break from the escort and are answered 
from our bridge. I turn to a sergeant who is sham- 
bling to and fro by the machine-room door, and in- 
form him that Port Said is in sight, and that he will 
be in harbour in an hour or so. 

293 



294 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

And then, just as suddenly as we entered, the 
door of that heated chamber of the sea opens and 
we pass out into a warm humid wind. The wind 
and the news wake everybody. The soldiers, 
who have encamped on our after deck during the 
voyage, suddenly display a feverish activity. Rations 
are packed, rifles are cleaned, and I am in the full 
tide of popular favour because I permit oil-reservoirs 
to be replenished in the machine room and furnish 
those priceless fragments of old emery cloth which 
give such a delectable and silvery gloss to the bolts. 
Later, I am so popular that I could almost stand for 
Parliament, for I tell the sergeant that each man 
may fill his water-bottle with iced water. Which 
they proceed to do at once, so that said water 
gets red-hot before the moment of disembarka- 
tion! 

But take a look at these men on our after deck 
while we are coming up to Port Said. You have 
never seen them before and you will not see them 
again, for they are bound for Bagdad and beyond. 
They are very representative, for they are of all 
ages, races, and regiments. They are going to join 
units which have been transferred. Three were 
hours in the water when their ship was torpedoed. 
Several have come overland across France and Italy, 
and got most pleasantly hung up at entrancing 
cities on the way. Others have come out of hospitals 
and trenches in Macedonia and France and Flanders. 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 295 

They are Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and EngHsh. The 
sergeant, now thumbing a worn pocket-book, has 
seen service in India, China, Egypt, and France. 

Behind him on the hatch, is a boy of eighteen 
who wears the uniform of the most famous regiment 
in the British Army. He is small for his age, and 
he has a most engaging smile. When I asked him 
how on earth he got into the Army he explained 
that he had **misriprisinted his age." He has a 
chum, a gaunt Highlander, who scarcely opened 
his lips all the voyage, and who sat on the hatch 
sewing buttons on their clothes, darning their stock- 
ings, and reading a rehgious pamphlet entitled 
** Doing it Now." 

There is another sergeant, too, a young gentleman 
going home to get a commission. He is almost to be 
described as one apart, for he holds no converse 
with the others. He walks in a mincing way, he 
has a gold watch with a curb-chain on one wrist, a 
silver identification plate and a silver slave-bangle 
from Saloniki on the other, and an amethyst ring 
on one of his fingers. As the Chief Engineer said 
to me one day, he needed only a spear and a ring 
through his nose to be a complete fighting man. 
However, in this war it is unwise to make snap 
judgments. I understand that this young gentle- 
man has an aptitude for certain esoteric brain- 
work of vast use in artillery. He never goes near 
the firing-line at all. Our young friend Angus 



296 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

MacFadden has that job. When the young gentle- 
man with the slave-bangle and gold-mounted 
fountain pen and expensive Kodak has figured out 
certain calculations in his dug-out office, Angus, who 
resembles an extremely warlike bell-hop, with his 
gaunt Highland chum beside him, will scramble 
up out of his trench, make a most determined rush 
toward a given point, and, in short, complete the 
job, whatever it may be. 

Now it is all very well to talk about the triumphs 
of mind over matter, but my interest is not with 
the young gentleman at all. He may carry Omar 
Khayyam in his kit. He may call the "Shropshire 
Lad" ''topping poetry." He may (as he does) 
borrow Swinburne from my book-shelf. My inter- 
est is with Angus and his chums. I look out of 
my machine-room window and watch them getting 
ready to disembark. They are very amusing, with 
their collapsible aluminium pannikins, their canvas 
wash-basins and buckets, their fold-up shaving 
tackle and telescopic tooth-brushes. 

There is one tough old private of the Old Army 
among them. He has the Egyptian and two South 
African medals. He never seems to have any kit 
to bother him. I see him in the galley, peeling 
potatoes for their dinner, deep in conversation with 
the pantry-man and smoking an Irish clay. He 
knows all the twenty-one moves, as we say. Then 
there is a very young man who reads love-stories 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 297 

all the time, a rosy-cheeked lad with the Distin- 
guished Service Medal ribbon on his tunic. 

Another, almost as young, is tremendously in- 
terested in refrigeration. He comes into my engine- 
room and stares in rapt increduhty at the snow 
on the machine. "I don't see why it doesn't 
melt!" he complains, as if he had a grievance. 
**How do you freeze? if it isn't a rude question." 

I explain briefly how we utilize the latent heat 
of reevaporation peculiar to certain gaseous media, 
in order to reduce the temperature. He turns on 
me with a rush of frankness and bursts out, " But, 
you know, that's all Greek to me!" Well, I suggest, 
his soldiering's all Greek to me, come to that. He 
laughs shortly, with his eyes on the ever-moving 
engines, and says he supposes so. By and by 
he begins to talk of his experiences in Macedonia. 
He thinks the sea is beautiful, after the bare hot 
gulches and ravines. He is so fair that the sun 
has burned his face and knees pink instead of brown. 
I ask him what he was doing before the war, and he 
says his father has a seed farm in Essex and he him- 
self was learning the business. 

Meanwhile we have arrived at Port Said. The 
engines stop and go astern violently, the pilot 
comes alongside in a boat and climbs the rope ladder. 
Just ahead is the breakwater, with a couple of motor 
patrols keeping guard over the fairway. Our escort 
puts on speed and goes in, for her job with us is done. 



298 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

She has gone in to coal, and she will be ready in a few 
hours to take another transport out. She and her 
sisters are like us — they are never through. The 
big ships may lie for days, or even weeks, in harbour. 
We small fry have to hurry. Back and forth we ply 
without ceasing. Sometimes we run ashore in our 
haste, and so make less speed. Sometimes we smash 
into each other in the dark, and ha»ve to stagger back 
to port and refit with all possible expedition. Some- 
times, too, we go out and never come back, and no- 
body save the authorities and our relatives hears 
anything about it. To what end.? Well — and 
herein lies my interest in those soldiers of the King 
on the after deck — the one ultimate object we have 
in view is to get Master Angus MacFadden and his 
chums into that front-line trench, to keep them there 
warm and fed, and fully suppHed with every possible 
assistance when they climb over the parapet to make 
the aforesaid rush. Everything else, when you come 
to think of it, is subordinate to that. 

The ship goes at half speed now past the break- 
water, a long gray finger pointing northward from 
the beach. Half way along we pass the De Lesseps 
statue on its high pedestal, the right hand flung out 
in a grandiose gesture toward the supreme achieve- 
ment of his life. The warm wind from the west- 
ward is sending up the sea to break in dazzling white 
foam on the yellow sand below the pink and blue 
and brown bathing-huts. The breakwater is crowded 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 299 

with citizens taking the air, for the walks of Port 
Said are restricted and flavoured with the odours of 
Arabian domesticity. We pass on, and the hotels 
and Custom-House buildings come into view. All 
around are the transients of the ocean, anchored 
and for a moment at rest. Past the Canal Building 
we steam, a pretentious stucco affair with three 
green-tiled domes and deep Byzantine galleries. 
Past also Navy House, a comely white building in 
the Venetian style, recalling the Doge's Palace — 
an illusion heightened by the fleet of patrols anchored 
in front, busily getting ready to go out to work. 

And then we stop, and manoeuvre, and go astern; 
tugs whistle imperiously, motor-boats buzz around 
us, ropes are hurriedly ferried across to buoys and 
quays, and we are made fast and pulled into our 
berth alongside of an immense vessel which has come 
from the other side of the world with frozen meat 
to feed Master Angus and his chums. But by this 
time it is dark. The ochreous sheen on the sky 
behind Port Said is darkening to purple and violet, 
the stars are shining peacefully over us, and the 
sergeant comes to ask for a lantern by which to finish 
packing his kit. 

It has been warm during the day, but now it is 
stifling. We are, as I said, close alongside a great 
ship. She extends beyond us and towers above us, 
and even the warm humid breeze of Port Said in 
August is shut out from us. Up from below comes 



300 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

3. suffocating stench of hot bilge. The ship is in- 
vaded by a swarm of Arab cargo-men, who begin 
immediately to load us from our neighbour. Cargo 
lights, of a ghastly blue colour, appear at the hatch- 
ways. Angus and his chums take up their kits and 
fall in on the bridge deck. Officers hurry to and fro. 
Hatches are taken off, and the cold air of the holds 
comes up in thin wisps of fog into the tropic night. 
Winches rattle. Harsh words of French and Arabic 
commingle with the more intelligible shouts of the 
ship's officers. All night this goes on. All night 
proceeds this preposterous traffic in frozen corpses, 
amid the dim blue radiance of the cargo-clusters. 
Hundreds upon hundreds of frozen corpses! 

I go off watch at eight and, seated in a room 
like a Turkish bath, I try to concentrate on the 
letters which have come over the sea. I am seized 
with a profound depression, arising, I suppose, from 
the bizarre discrepancy between the moods communi- 
cated by the letters and my own weariness. Most 
letters are so optimistic in tone. They clap one on 
the back and give one breezy news of the flowers in 
New Jersey gardens, of the heat in New Orleans, of 
bombs in London and reunions in EngHsh houses. 
All very nice; but I have to get up at two, and the 
thermometer over my bunk is now registering a 
hundred Fahrenheit. An electric fan buzzes and 
snaps in the corner and seems only to make the air 
hotter. An Arab passes in the alleyway outside and 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 30 j 

calls to some one named Achmet in an unmelodious 
howl. (All male Arabs are named Achmet 
apparently.) 

I sit in my pajamas, with the letters in my hand 
and wonder how long it is going to last. Another 
week or so and we shall have had two years of it. 
Most of us have gone home on leave. Counting the 
Commander, there are — let me see — foar of us left 
of the original crowd. It is over a year since I ap- 
plied for leave. Nothing will come of it. I look 
into the future and see myself, a gray elderly failure, 
still keeping a six-hour shift on a Mediterranean 
transport, my hfe spent, my friends and relatives 
all dead, Angus and his chums gone west, and a new 
generation coming out, with vigorous appetites for 
fresh provisions. 

And then the door opens and lets in a sHght uni- 
formed figure with a grip in his hand and a familiar 
smile on his face. Lets in also liberty, freedom, 
pay-day, England, Home, and Beauty. 

It is my relief, arrived at last! 

II 

We greet each other shyly, for the Chief and some of 
the others are standing in the alleyway, with broad 
grins on their faces at my look of flabbergasted be- 
wilderment. An Arab porter comes along with a 
big canvas bag of dunnage, which he dumps at our 
feet. 



302 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

**Why — ^what — how — when — did you get here?" 
I ask weakly. 

*' Train from Alexandria," he replies, sitting down 
on the settee. 

My kitten, a sandy little savage known as 
O. Henry, jumps up and begins to make friends. 
O. Henry is stroked and tickled, and Tommy 
looks up at me with his old tolerant, bland, imper- 
turbable smile. 

"You, of all people!" I remark, looking at him 
inanely. 

"Aye, they sent me out,'^ he affirms. "They 
told me you were here. How's things?" 

The others go away, still smiling, and I shut the 
door. For this young chap, who has come across 
Europe to relieve me, is an old shipmate. We were 
on the Merovingian. We have been many voyages 
to Rio and the Plate. We were always chums. In 
some obscure fashion, we got on. Tommy is North 
Country — dry, taciturn, reticent, slow to make 
friends. He abhors bluffers. I like him. We 
have never written, though, for it is a fact that 
some friendships do not "carry" in a letter. They 
are like some wines — they do not travel. For all I 
knew, I was never to see him again. What of that? 
We had been chums and we understood each other. 
I had often thought of him since Fd been out here 
— a good little shipmate. And now here he was, 
on my settee, smiling and tickling O. Henry just 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 303 

where he Hkes to be tickled, and asking me to come 
ashore with him. 

Will I come ashore with him? Will I not? I 
drag open drawers, fling out a white drill suit, and 
begin to dress. I open the door and shout to the 
messman to go and get a boat and bring my shoes 
and some hot water. While I shave, Tommy relates 
his adventures in a sketchy way. He has no gift of 
tongues, but now and again he strikes out a phrase 
that brings the picture before me. He has been 
torpedoed. He was in the Malthusian when she was 
"plugged." He was on watch, of course — ^Thirds 
always are on watch when anything happens. I 
used to tell him that he was the original of Brown- 
ing's ** Shadowy Third," he is so small, with delicate 
hands and that charming, elusive, shadowy smile. 
•,- Oh, I remark, as I reach for the talcum powder, 
he was torpedoed, was he? He nods and smiles at 
O. Henry's trick of falling off the settee, head over 
heels. And the poor old Malthusian too — ^what a 
box of tricks she was, with her prehistoric pumps 
and effervescent old dynamo — gone at last, eh? 
Tommy says nothing about the catastrophe save 
that he lost his gear. Then, he observes, he joined 
the Polynesian as Third, having, of course, got him- 
self fresh gear. Ah, and had I heard about the 
Polynesian? She's gone too, he said, letting O. 
Henry down to the floor by his tail. What? Tor- 
pedoed too? It must be a sort of habit with him. 



304 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

Good Heavens! But no, says Tommy; she was 
attacked, but she got away, and 

"It was a funny thing,'' he adds meditatively; 
and looks at me as though he couldn't make it out. 

"What," I ask, "what happened?" as I look round 
for my stick and cigar-case. 

"Oh, I'll tell you when we get ashore," he says; 
and he rolls O. Henry into a ball and drops him on 
my bunk. 

"Come on, then. Sam! Got that boat?" 

A negro voice howls, "Yes, sah," and we go out 
and down the ladder. 

A three-quarter moon is coming up, hangs now 
over Palestine, and Port Said, the ancient Pelusium, 
takes on a serene splendour inconceivable to those 
who have seen her only in the hard dusty glare of 
noon-day. The harsh outlines of the ships soften 
to vague shadows touched with silver; the profound 
gloom within the colonnades of the Canal building, 
the sheen of the moonlight on green domes and gray 
stucco walls make of it a fairy palace of mist and 
emerald. Each motor-launch speeding past leaves 
a broadening, heaving furrow of phosphorescence. 
Each dip of our oars breaks the dark water into 
an incredible swirl of boiling greenish-white radi- 
ance. 

Tommy and I sit side by side in the stern in 
silence as the Arab boatman, in blue gown and 
round white cap, pulls us up to the Custom-House 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 305 

quay. We pass out at a side gate and find ourselves 
in Egyptian darkness. Whether this is due to 
mihtary exigencies or to a shortage of fuel, nobody 
seems to know. The hotel buildings along the front 
throw their shadows right across the Sharia el 
Tegera, down which we pass until we reach the broad 
dusty Rue el Nil, a boulevard running straight down 
to the sea. We are bound for the Eastern Exchange 
Hotel, famiharly known as "The Eastern.^' It is 
the grand rallying-point of mariners east and west of 
Suez. It is a huge gaunt structure of glass and iron, 
built over to the curb of the street, and the arcade 
under it is full of green chairs and tables, green 
shrubs in enormous tubs, and climbing plants 
twined about the iron stanchions. The lights are 
shrouded in green petroleum cans, and one has the 
illusion of sitting in the glade of some artificial 
forest. Hotel waiters, in long white robes cut across 
with brilliant scarlet sashes, and surmounted by 
scarlet fezes, move noiselessly to and fro with trays 
of drinks. An orchestra, somewhere beyond, plays 
a plaintive air. 

All around are uniforms— naval and military, 
British, French, Itahan, and so forth. It is here,' 
I say, that East and West do meet. Here the 
skipper from Nagasaki finds an old shipmate just in 
from New Orleans. Here a chief engineer, burned 
brown and worn thin by a summer at Basra, drinks 
with a friend bound east from Glasgow to Rangoon. 



3o6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

Here the gossip of all the ports of the Seven Seas 
changes hands over the little tables under the dim 
green-shaded lights. Outside, beyond the screen 
of verdure, a carriage will go by stealthily in the 
dust, a cigar glowing under the hood. Itinerant 
salesmen of peanuts in glass boxes, beads, Turkish 
delight, postals, cigarettes, news-sheets, postage 
stamps, and all the other passenger junk, pass to and 
fro. A native conjurer halts as we sit down, sadly 
produces a dozen lizards from an apparently empty 
fez, and passes on as I look coldly upon his peri- 
patetic legerdemain. Here and there parties of 
residents sit round a table — a French family, perhaps, 
or Italian, or Maltese, or Greek, or Hebrew, or 
Syrian — for they are all to be found here in Pelusium, 
the latter making money out of their conquerors, 
just as, I dare say, they did in Roman times. Papa 
is smoking a cigarette; Mamma is sitting back 
surveying the other denizens of the artificial forest 
through her lorgnon; the young ladies converse with 
a couple of youthful "subs" in khaki, and a bare- 
legged boy, in an enormous pith hat like an inverted 
bath, is haggHng over half a piastre with a vendor 
of peanuts. Tommy and I sit in the shadow of a 
shrub and I order gin and lime-juice. He wants 
beer, but there is no beer — only some detestable 
carbonated bilge-water at half a dollar (ten piastres) 
the bottle. 

And soldiers go by continually to and from the 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 307 

cafes and canteens. Many are Colonials, and their 
wide-brimmed hats decorated with feathers give 
them an extraordinarily dissipated air. There is 
something very un-English about these enormous, 
loose-limbed, rolHng fighting men, with their cheeks 
the colour of raw beef and their truculent eyes 
under their wide hats. They remind me at times 
of the professional soldiers of my school-days, who 
dressed in scarlet and gold and were a race apart. 
As they pass us, in twos and threes and singly, 
slouching and jmgling their spurs, and roll off into 
darkness again I think of Master Angus MacFadden 
and his chums, and I wonder what the future holds 
for us all. Then I hear Tommy talking and I began 
to Hsten. 

No use trying to tell the story as he told it. Who- 
ever thinks he can is the victim of an illusion. 
Tommy's style, like his personality, is not Hterary. 
I often wonder, when I think of the sort of life he 
has led, how he comes to express himself at all. For 
he often startles me with some queer semi-articulate 
flash of intuition. A direct challenge to Life! As 
when he said, looking up at me as we leaned over 
the bulwarks and watched the sunrise one morning 
in the Caribbean, "Yo' know, I haven't had any 
life." 

Well, as I said, he and I are chums on some mys- 
teriously taciturn, North Country principle that 
won't bear talking about! And I must tell the 



3o8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

story in my own way, merely quoting a phrase now 
and then. I owe him that much because, you see 
he was there. 



Ill 



i 



That voyage he made in the Polynesian was her 
usual London-to-South-American-ports. And noth- 
ing happened until they were homeward bound 
and making Ushant. It was a glorious day, as 
clear as it ever is in northern waters, and the Third 
Mate was astonished to see through his glasses what 
he took to be land. Ushant already! As he looked 
he saw a flash and his wonder deepened. He told 
himself, well, he'd be blowed. A tremendous bang 
a hundred yards abeam of the Polynesian nearly 
shook him overboard. It had come at last, then! 

The Old Man came from his room, running side- 
ways, his face set in a kind of spasm, and stood by 
the rail, clutching it as if petrified. The Third Mate, 
a friend of Tommy's, pointed and handed the binoc- 
ulars just in time for the Old Man to see another 
flash. The mooring telegraph clanged and jangled. 
The Third Mate ran to the telphone and was listen- 
ing, when the second shell, close to the bows, ex- 
ploded on the water and made him drop the receiver. 
Then he heard the Old Man order the helm over — 
over — over, whirling his arm to emphasize the vital 
need of putting it hard over. A few moments of 
tense silence, and then, with a roar that nearly 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 309 

split all their ear-drums, the Polynesian s six-inch 
anti-raider gun loosed off at nine thousand yards. 

So you must envisage this obscure naval engage- 
ment on that brilHant summer day in the green 
Atlantic. Not a ripple to spoil the aim, not a cloud 
in the sky, as the two gunners, their sleeves rolled 
to the shoulders, their bodies heaving, thrust a 
fresh shell and cartridge into the breech, shoved in 
the cap, and swung the block into place with the soft 
"cluck" of steel smeared with vasehne. As the 
ship veers, the gun is trained steady on the gray 
dot. Nine thousand and fifty, no deflection — 
** Stand away!" There is another roar, and the 
gunner who has stood away now stands with his 
feet apart, his elbows out, staring with intense 
concentration through his glasses. 

Down below, the engine-room staff, which in- 
cluded Tommy doing a field-day on the spare gener- 
ator, were clustered on the starting platform. The 
expansion links had been opened out full — any 
locomotive driver will show you what I mean — 
and the Polynesian s engines, four thousand seven 
hundred horse-power indicated, driven by steam 
at two hundred pounds to the square inch from her 
four Scotch boilers, were turning eighty-nine revolu- 
tions per minute and making very good going for 
her, but nothing to write home about, when a modern 
submersible cruiser doing sixteen knots on the 
surface was pelting after her. The tremendous 



3IO HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

explosions of the six-inch gun discouraged conver- 
sation. 

The Chief Engineer, a tall man with a full chest- 
nut moustache and a stern contemptuous expression 
born of his hatred of sea-life, was striding up and 
down the plates. The Second appeared, hke Ariel, 
around, above, below, intent on sundry fidgets 
of his own, and whistling — nobody knew why. The 
Fourth was in the stokehold and back in the engine- 
room every ten minutes. The Fifth, as though 
he had been naughty and was being punished by 
that stern man with the four gold-and-purple rings 
on his sleeve, was standing with his face to the wall, 
big rubber navy phone-receivers on his ears and his 
eyes fixed in a rapt saintly way on two ground- 
glass discs above him, one of which was aglow and 
bore the legend More Revolutions. The other. 
Less Revolutions, was dull and out of use. So he 
stood, waiting for verbal orders. 

All the revolutions possible were being suppHed, 
for the safety-valves were lifting with an occasional 
throaty flutter. Unexpectedly the Second would 
appear from the tunnel, where he had been feeling 
the stern gland, and would hover lovingly over the 
thrust-block, whistling, amid the clangour of four 
thousand seven hundred horse-power: "Love me, and 
the world is mine." 

Suddenly all was swallowed up, engulfed, in one 
heart-shattering explosion on deck. It was so tre- 



1 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 311 

mendous that the Fifth's head involuntarily darted 
out from the receivers and he looked sharply at the 
Chief, who was standing stock-still with his long legs 
apart, his hands in his coat pockets, staring over his 
shoulder with stern intentness into vacancy. The 
telephone bell brayed out a call and the Fifth fitted 
his head once again to the receiver. "Yes, sir!" 
he sang out; and then, to the others, "We're gainin' 
on her! We're gainin' on her!" Tommy goes on 
methodically with his dynamo. He is close at hand 
when wanted; ready, resourceful, devoid of panic. 
The excitement is on deck, where the shell has 
struck the house amidships, blown the galley 
ranges and bakehouse ovens overboard, killed three 
men outright, and left two more mere moving hor- 
rors of the slaughter-house floor. Another, a scul- 
lion, with his hand cut ofF at the wrist, is running 
round and round, falling over the wreckage, and 
pursued by a couple of stewards with bandages and 
friar's balsam. 

And on that gray dot, now nine thousand five 
hundred yards astern, there is excitement, no doubt, 
for it seems authentic that the Polynesian s third shot 
hit the forward gun-mounting, and the list caused by 
this, heavy things slewing over, the damage to the 
deck, the rupture of certain vital oil-pipes, and the 
wounds of the crew, would account for tht Polynesian, 
with her fourteen-point-seven knots, gaining on U— 
ggg, supposed to have sixteen knots on the surface. 



312 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

On the bridge of the Polynesian, too, there is ex- 
citement of sorts. The Chief Mate, who has been 
rushing about, helping the ammunition carriers, 
then assisting the stewards with their rough surgery, 
then up on the bridge again, has come up and is 
prancing up and down, every now and then looking 
hard at the Old Man, who stares through the tele- 
scope at the gray dot. 

Something awful had happened. When that shell 
hit the ship, the Old Man had called out hoarsely, 
"That's enough — oh, enough — boats!" and the Chief 
Mate, to the horror of the young Third Mate, who 
told Tommy about it, grabbed the Old Man round 
the waist, whirled him into the chartroom, and 
slammed the door upon them both. The Third 
Mate says he saw, through the window, the Chief 
Mate's fist half an inch from the Old Man's nose, 
the Old Man looking at it in gloomy silence, and the 
Chief Mate's eyes nearly jumping out of his 
head as he argued and threatened and implored. 
". . . Gainin' on her," was all the Third Mate 
could hear, and ". . . For God's sake, sir!" and 
such-like strong phrases. So the Third Mate says. 
And then they came out again, and the Mate tele- 
phoned to the engine room. 

IV 

The company is dwindling now, for, as Tommy gulps 
his drink and orders two more, it is on the stroke of 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 313 

nine, when the bars close, and folks are melting 
group by group into the darkness. Some are bound 
for home, some for "Eldorado," a dusty barn where 
one watches dreadful melodramatic films and faints 
with the heat. The lights are turned still lower. The 
few shops which have been open in a stealthy way 
now shut up close. The moonlight throws sharp 
blue-black shadows on the white dust of the Rue el 
Nil. The orchestra fades away; chairs are stacked 
between the tubs, and reproachful glances are cast 
upon the dozen or so of us who still linger in the 
gloom. 

I become aware that Tommy, in his own odd little 
semi-articulate fashion, is regarding me as though 
he had some extraordinary anxiety on his mind. 
That is the way his expression strikes me. As 
though he had had some tremendous experience 
and didn't know what to make of it. I remember 
seeing something like it in the face of a youth, re- 
Hgiously brought up, who was listening for the first 
time to an atheist attempting to shake the founda- 
tions of his faith. And while I ruminate upon this 
unusual portent in Tommy's physiognomy, he 
plunges into the second part of his story. It has its 
own appeal to those who love and understand the 
sea. 

For the rest of the day the Polynesian s course 
was a series of intricate convolutions on the face of 
the Atlantic. As the Third Mate put it in his lively 



314 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

way, you could have played it on a piano. Owing to 
the wireless room having been partially demolished 
they were out of touch with the world, and the Com- 
mander felt lonely. He even regretted for a while 
that he had not retired. Was just going to when 
the war came. He was sixty years old, and had 
been an easy-going skipper for twenty years now. 
This — and he wiped his moist face with his handker- 
chief — this wasn't at all what he had bargained for 
when he had volunteered to carry on "for the dura- 
tion of the war." Men dead and dying and muti- 
lated, ship torn asunder. He sat on his settee and 
stared hard at the head and shoulders of the man 
at the wheel, adumbrated on the ground-glass win- 
dow in front of him. He had turned sick at the 

sight down there 

But the Polynesian was still going. Not a bolt, 
rivet, plate, or rod of her steering and propeUing 
mechanism had been touched, and she was gal- 
loping northwest by west at thirteen knots. The 
Commander hoped for a dark night, for in his present 
perturbed state the idea of being torpedoed at night 
was positively horrible. The Brohdingnagian, now, 
was hit at midnight and sunk in three minutes with 
all hands but two. He wiped his face again. He 
felt that he wasn't equal to it. 

p It was dark. All night it was dark and moonless. 
All night they galloped along up-Channel. All 
night the Old Man walked the bridge, watching the 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 315 

blackness ahead. At four o'clock the Mate came 
on watch and the Old Man felt that he must lie 
down. He was more than sixty years old, remember, 
and he had been on his feet for eighteen hours. 
The Chief Mate, who had been strangely shy since 
his outrageous behaviour, merely remarked that it 
looked as if it might be thick presently, and began to 
pace to and fro. 

What happened — if anything did happen — no- 
body seemed to know; but Tommy, who came off at 
four, and was enjoying a pipe, a cup of cocoa, and a 
game of patience in his room, was suddenly flung 
endways against his wardrobe, and a series of 
grinding crashes, one of which sent his porthole glass 
in a burst of fragments over his bedplace, buckled 
the plates of the ship's side. He remembered that 
the wardrobe door flew open as he sprang up, and 
his derby hat bounced to the floor. 

He at once skipped down below, where he found 
the Second and Chief trying to carry out a number 
of -rapid, contradictory orders from the telegraph. 
And as he joined them the telegraph whirled from 
"Full astern" to "Stand by," and stopped. They 
stood by. Tommy was told to go and finish 
"changing over," which involves opening and shutting 
several mysterious valves. Having achieved this, 
he took up his station by the telegraph. 

The Chief, clad in a suit of rumpled but elegant 
pink-and-saff'ron-striped pajamas, prowled to and 



3i6 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

fro in front of the engines like one of the larger carni- 
vora in front of his cage. The Second, with the 
sleeves of his coat rolled up, as if he were a conjuror 
and wished to show there was no deception, pro- 
duced a cigarette from his ear, a match from an 
invisible ledge under the log-desk, and then caused 
himself to disappear into the stokehold, whistling a 
tune at one time very popular In Dublin called **Mick 
McGilligan's Daughter Mary Anne." He returned 
in the same mysterious fashion, smoking with much 
enjoyment, and reporting greaser, firemen, and trim- 
mers all gone up on deck. 

And so they waited, those three, and waited, and 
waited; and the dawn came up, ineffably tender, 
and far up above them through the skylights they 
saw the stars through the fog turn pale, and still there 
was no sign, the telegraph finger pointing, in its mute 
peremptory way, at "Stand by." They were standing 
by. 

And at length it grew to be past endurance. The 
Chief spoke sharply into the telephone. Nothing. 
Suddenly he turned and ordered Tommy to go up 
and see what was doing. The Second, coming in 
from the stokehold, reported water in the cross- 
bunker, but the doors were down. So Tommy went 
up the long ladders and out on deck and stood stock- 
still before the great experience of his hfe. For they 
were alone on the ship, those three. The boats 
were gone. There was no sound, save the banging 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 317 

of the empty blocks and the gurgle and slap of the 
sea against her sides. 

For a moment, Tommy said, he *'had no heart." 
The sheer simplicity of the thing unmanned him, 
as well it might. He hadn't words — Gone! Behind 
the horror lay another horror, and it was the rem- 
embrance of this ultimate apprehension that I saw in 
his face to-night. And then he threw himself back- 
ward (a North Country football trick), turned, and 
rushed for the ladder. The other two, down below, 
saw him there, his eyes feverish, his face dark and 
anxious, his usually low voice harsh and strident, as 
he prayed them to drop everything and come up 
quick — come on — and his voice trailed off into huski- 
ness and heavy breathing. 

When they came up, which happened immediately, 
four steps at a time, they found him sprawled against 
the bulwarks, his chin on his hands, looking as 
though to fix the scene for ever on his brain. And 
they looked too, and turned faint, for there, far 
across the darkling sparkle of the sea, were the 
boats, and on the sky-line a smear of smoke. So 
they stood, each in a characteristic attitude — 
Tommy asprawl on the rail, the Second half way up 
the bridge-deck ladder, one hand on his hip, the Chief 
with his hands behind him, his long legs widely 
planted, his head well forward, scowling. They 
were as Tommy put it, *'in a state." It wasn't, you 
know, the actual danger; it was the carrying away 



3i8 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

of their faith in the world of Hving men. Good God! 
And I imagine the prevaihng emotion in their heart 
at this moment was instinct in the lad's query to 
me — **What was the use of goin' back, or making a 
fight of it, if that was all they thought of us ? " And 
then the Polynesian recalled them from speculations 
as to the ultimate probity of the human soul by giv- 
ing a sudden lunge forward. She was sinking. 

For a moment. Tommy says, they were "in a 
state." I should imagine they were. They began 
running round and round the deck, picking up pieces 
of wood and dropping them in a shame-faced manner. 
Suddenly the Chief remembered the raft — an unfor- 
tunate structure of oil-barrels and hatches. It was 
on the foredeck, a frowsy incumbrance devised by 
the Mate in a burst of ingenuity against the fatal 
day. When the three of them arrived on the fore- 
deck their hopes sank again. A single glance showed 
the impossibility of hfting it without steam on the 
winches. They stood round it and deliberated in 
silence, tying on life-belts which they had picked up 
on the bridge deck. The Polynesian gave another 
lunge, and they climbed on the raft and held tight. 

The Polynesian was in her death throes. She had 
been cut through below the bridge, and the water was 
filling the cross-bunker and pressing the air in Num- 
ber Two hold up against the hatches. While they 
sat there waiting, the tarpaulins on the hatch bal- 
looned up and burst like a gun-shot^ releasing the 



PORT SAID MISCELLANY 319 

air imprisoned within. She plunged again, and the 
sea poured over her bulwarks and cascaded around 
them. The raft sHd forward against a winch, skin- 
ning the Second's leg against a wheel-guard. They 
held on. 

Now, it is perfectly simple in theory to sit on a 
raft and allow a ship to sink under you. The ship 
sinks, and the raft, retaining its buoyancy, floats. 
Quite simple, in theory. In practice, however, 
many factors tend to vitiate the simplicity of it. 
Indeed, it becomes so difficult that only by the mercy 
of God could anybody attempt it and survive. 
The fore deck of the Polynesian was like the fore 
deck of most ships, cluttered up with hatch comb- 
ings, winches, ventilator-cowls, steam-pipes, masts, 
derricks, bollards, snatch-blocks, dead-eyes, ladders, 
and wire-rope drums. Look forward from the prom- 
enade next time you make a trip, and conceive it. 
As the Polynesian subsided, she wallowed. Her cen- 
tre of gravity was changing every second, and the 
raft, with its three serious passengers, was charging 
to and fro as if it were alive and trying to escape. 
It carried away a ventilator, and then, for one horri- 
ble instant, was caught in the standing rigging and 
canted over. A rush to starboard released it, and the 
next moment it was free. Only the windlass on the 
forecastle-head was now above water forward. 

They saw nothing more of her. Not that she 
vanished all at once, but the sucking whirlpools 



320 HARBOURS OF MEMORY 

in which the raft was turning over and reeling back 
on them kept them fully occupied. And when at 
last they had coughed up the sea-water and wiped 
their eyes and looked at each other as they floated in 
the gentle swell of a smiling summer sea, she was 
gone. Only one thing destroyed their peace and 
stood up before them like a spectre; she was lying 
at the bottom, with her telegraph at "Stand by." The 
deathless sporting spirit of the race was expressed in 
these words: "You know, if it hadn't been for that, 
it was a joke, man!" 

The moon rides high over Pelusium as we go back 
to the ship. Tommy and I will keep the morning 
watch together for once and talk over old times. 
To-morrow I shall go through the hot white dust 
of the Rue el Nil and be paid off in the consul's ofl&ce 
for my two years' labour. There is a mail boat 
next week, and perhaps I shall board her, passenger- 
fashion, and go across the blue Mediterranean, 
through sunny France, across the EngHsh Channel 
where the Polynesian stands by for ever, up through 
Sussex orchards and over Surrey downs. And 
perhaps, as I idle away the autumn in the dim beauty 
of the Essex fenland, and as we drive in the pony- 
cart through the lanes, we shall stop and the chil- 
dren will say, "If you stand up, you can see the sea." 

Perhaps. Who knows? , 

7 8 ^ ^ THE^^ND 1 



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